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Chapter Introductions

AWARENESS
This section presents teaching activities that focus on raising learners' awareness of pragmatic differences between languages. Activities in this section focus on discovery of pragmatics through guided noticing of language use and language features. The chapters in this section deal with a wide range of topics, including politeness, greetings, and terms of address. The lessons create interest and awareness as part of the learning process. The activities in this section may serve as models for teachers who wish to increase awareness in other areas of pragmatics. In "In the Mood: Introducing Pragmatic Awareness at Low Levels," Kontra begins the section by introducing an activity for beginners, utilizing intonation in the activities and giving learners an opportunity to experience how mood affects language production. In "Greetings with a Difference," Burke and O'Sullivan pick up the theme of intonation and attitude as they guide learners through multiple enactments of a script. In "Politeness is More than 'Please'" by Howard and "Spot the Problem!" by Edwards, the authors draw learners' attention to various politeness devices available in English. Biesenbach-Lucas introduces task type and speakers as important variables in speech act production in "Speakers and Task Type: Increasing Awareness of Factors in Speech Act Production." The contemporary necessity of understanding how to address women in the professions is studied in "Terms of Address" by Takenoya. Finally, Pawan and Reed use a story about a misunderstanding that results from silence to promote awareness of the necessity of speaking up in an awkward situation in "The Texas Airport Cookies: Pragmatic Variation from an Urban Legend."

CONVERSATIONAL MANAGEMENT
This section includes activities that address the mechanics of conversation, such as turn taking, active listening, relevant short responses, and using hesitation markers. Four of the chapters focus on helping learners build a repertoire of meaningful short responses that continue the conversation and promote interaction. The “Comment-Response Mingle” by Yates introduces formulaic responses to commonly occurring situations. In “Promoting Solidarity in Short Interactions,” Higgins provides learners with practice in using relexicalization strategies. These strategies lead to nonformulaic responses that build on speakers’ turns as the conversation unfolds. Whereas Yates and Higgins focus on positive responses, Wennerstrom emphasizes contrastive responses in “Making Contrasts in English.”

Gallow bridges the dual conversational roles of listener and speaker in the chapter, “Listen Actively! You Can Keep that Conversation Going!” The chapter shows that good listeners must provide oral responses to keep up their end of the conversation. Continuing with the theme of the speaking responsibilities of listeners is Berry’s chapter, “Are You Listening? (Backchannel Behaviors).” Berry promotes awareness of how different languages signal attention and interest during listening and provides students with practice in using backchannels, such as “uh-huh” and “yeah.” In “Discourse Markers ‘Well’ and ‘Oh’” Lee’s activities assist students in building response strategies that include common discourse markers. These markers help speakers mark uncertainty or surprise, functions that are often overlooked in conversational models. “’That’s Wrong!’ Improving the Friendly Discussions of Controversial Issues” by Malamed offers learners alternatives to direct disagreements and offers different ways to express opinions in classroom activities, such as groupwork.

CONVERSATIONAL OPENINGS AND CLOSINGS
The activities in this section deal with the boundaries of conversations: how to begin and end conversations both in person and on the telephone. These activities are designed to help learners become more familiar and feel more comfortable with initiating conversations and participating successfully in closings whether as the initiator or the respondent. In “Hello! I Must Be Going!” Herrin provides resources for opening and closing conversations through conversational activities. Edwards, “How Are You, Auntie Elizabeth?” focuses on opening the conversation and address forms. Closing the conversation is the focus of Griswold’s lesson “How Do You Say Goodbye?” which employs authentic conversations and role plays. Wong helps learners negotiate opening segments of telephone calls in “Telephone Conversation Openings.”

REQUESTS
All of the activities in this section deal with the specific speech act of asking someone to do something. The chapters include a wide variety of situations that range from face to face requests between friends to email requests to instructors. Three lessons in this section employ the computer, providing both practice with electronic communication and with computer aided language learning. In addition, four of the lessons are set in the academic environment. “’Get to the Point, Will You Please?’ Requesting the Main Point in the Classroom” by Yuan includes strategies for clarifying the focus of a lecture or conversational contribution. “E-Mail Requests” by Mach and Ridder and “What Do You Think? Requesting Responses from Professors” by Weasenforth help learners negotiate low to high status requests to professors via email. “The Pragmatics Action Maze” by Salsbury employs the computer as a platform for delivery of a self-contained on-line lesson in requesting. Yates focuses on interpersonal requests and strategies for mitigating them in “Softening Short Requests.”

ASSORTED SPEECH ACTS
This section presents a variety of speech acts including, compliments, refusals, complaints, and requests while waiting in lines. In “Leave a Speech Act after the Beep”: Pragmatics on the Telephone,” Demo illustrates how learners can use their telephone answering machines or message services to collect data on a variety of speech acts. Hardy addresses both nonverbal and verbal aspects of waiting in line, including how to ask someone to hold a place in line in “The Rules of the Queue.” Both face-to-face and written complaints in business and commercial exchanges are practiced in “Complaining Successfully: Negotiating Redress in Service Encounters” by Reynolds. Moving from the institutional to the social, Ishihara and Kondo offer activities related to complimenting and refusing an invitation. In “Giving and Responding to Compliments,” Ishihara develops a multi-component instructional unit in which learner practice the two speech acts of the title. Finally, in “Teaching Refusals in an EFL Setting,” Kondo demonstrates how comparisons of speech act production in the first and second languages can be used to help learners discover pragmatics differences in a five-step unit that includes discussing feelings as well as linguistic characteristics.

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