Pragmatics is so important in the English learning process!!

    Pragmatics is an essential part of the language which aims to use language appropriately based on the context (Canale and Swain, 1980; Bachman, 1990). learners have to acquire the pragmatic competence of the target language, which is the ability choose appropriate language in different contexts (Hymes, 1972; Bachman, 1990; Kasper,1997)

    We need to know that we have to understand the culture of the foreign country  because it can cause us big problems when we are talking to native speakers, each country have different ways of communicate, for example, Eduardo came to the United States as an international student from a Latin American country. He was fluent in English as a second language and had well-developed basic interpersonal skills. Once settled in Santa Cruz, California, Eduardo attended his first college orientation session. He was introduced to a woman from the U.S. and the first thing he did was a customary greeting in his home country: patting her arm and shaking hands while kissing her cheek in in a very well timed and fast paced set of actions. As he greeted her with English words and Latin gestures, she blushed, her eyes narrowed and her facial muscles tensed. Eduardo sensed something was wrong. Eduardo was informed Eduardo was later informed by his advisor that some women do not consider it appropriate to kiss the cheek in the United States. 

  This example above can show that culture is very important in these cases, eduardo thought that his greeting was appropiate because it is in his culture, even if we understand the language, we need to study and know the culture of the country (in this case United States) in order to develop a good communication without misunderstandings.  we always improve areas such as grammar, listening, speaking, writing and do not give importance to pragmatics which is very important.

  Many studies (Walters 1979; Fraser, Rintell, & Walters 1980; Cohen 1996) point out that misinterpreting and miscommunication often occur because the differences of pragmatic rules between language learners and native speakers. 

  Example 2: the greetings and farewells, in spain these are usually shorts and directs but in arabic the greeting is longer, informative and more ritualized , so this could be a problem for native speakers, because if we greet them according our culture they would take it as bad manners and could cause problems between us.  

  Example 3: the English-speaking people and the Chinese people take different views towards modesty. When being complimented, e.g. “You are really an excellent basket-ball player”, the Chinese people always say “No, no, I am a poor basket-ball player”; while the English-speaking people will say “Thank you, that’s because I have practiced a lot.” In the Chinese culture, it is considered to be modest to decline a compliment, but in cross-cultural communication, it may make one think that the compliment-giver has a poor sense of judgement.

Techniques required fot the development of pragmatics competence 

  There are many techniques or strategies, but some of them are: 

• Teachers should encourage their students to understand their own culture first in order to be able to communicate with people from different cultures (Chen, 1990, cited in Lin, 2008). 
• Practice the target language.  
• Allowing learners to demonstrate their skills.
• Receive constructive feedback from native speakers.
• Teachers should use activities such as role- play, simulation and drama which can provide cultural awareness to students and to make students familiar in the target language situations or contexts (Kasper, 1997; Jung, 2002; EslamiRasekh, 2005). 
• Teachers must use authentic materials from English speakers countries.