Cambridge Blog contributor Christina Giannikas has published an article titled ‘Teaching pragmatics to young learners of the digital age’.
She says, “Pragmatic competence can be challenging for young learners if they only gain limited exposure to the language for real communication in an authentic social setting. In this article, we will see how the digital age has influenced functional abilities in language learning.
Pragmatics and language learning
Studies have investigated the ways in which young learners gradually gain the knowledge of what, when, and to whom they should say something, how they can study such knowledge, and be assessed in social settings. All these make up the field of pragmatics in language teaching (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). One could argue that exposure to an additional language is vital in order for children to develop pragmatic competence and embrace authentic techniques in communication. Classroom input makes an important contribution to English language learning (Kim & Hall, 2002), so they have proved to be indispensable elements in the progress of pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig, 2013). But what role can digital tools play?
Teaching Pragmatics
Teaching pragmatics can start early in language education. Children can find a great deal of meaning in greetings, compliments, and even complaining.”