PRAGMATIC FAETURES OF TRANSACTION IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “INTERNATIONAL AND HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE, PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS”, OCTOBER 30-31, 2025 438 PRAGMATIC FAETURES OF TRANSACTION IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS I.A. Murodova Teacher of Kattakurgan State Pedagogical Institute https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17586778 Understanding the pragmatics of a language helps learners use language appropriately in different situations, but what does pragmatics mean for the English language teacher? It is important to realize that there is no one best way to teach pragmatics. Teachers can build information on pragmatics into existing lesson plans, or they might add information or lessons on pragmatics as the need becomes evident. For example, after being asked many questions that were taboo, the young teacher created a lesson on taboo questions when meeting someone for the first time in order to talk with students about taboo questions across cultures. Lessons on pragmatics often relate to different language functions, such as greetings, requests, complaints, invitations, and apologies and often include the home culture and the target culture, but they might also include other cultures as well. Lessons on pragmatics are sometimes (but not always) carried out through speech act sets. A speech act set is a set of possible strategies for use in a particular language function. For instance, for an apology, a speech act in English could include the following strategies: expression of apology (I’m sorry for being late), acknowledgment of responsibility Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash (It is my fault), explanation or account (The reason this happened is that I forgot to set my alarm.), offer of repair (I will buy you lunch.), and promise of non-recurrence (It will never happen again.). When giving an apology, speakers would use a minimum of at least one strategy, but could make use of numerous strategies. Instruction in pragmatics can start at early levels of language proficiency. For instance, in our example, there was a great deal of pragmatic meaning in the greeting, and greetings are often one of the first language functions learners are introduced to. As English language teachers, our main goal for teaching pragmatics is to raise learners’ awareness about the choices they can make when interacting in the target language. Textbooks for language learning don’t always include information about pragmatic ability, and pragmatics does not always receive much attention in teacher training programs. Fortunately, there are many excellent resources on American English. Despite the increase in the amount of information concerning pragmatic competence in EFL and ESL learners, several issues still remain to be investigated. Firstly, the effectiveness of the proposed instruction is confirmed by the fact that pragmatic competence is higher with ESL learners. Moreover, the existing studies failed to investigate several particular socio-cultural factors which contribute to pragmatic development in EFL settings as the cultures of the respective regions. Future research may investigate how different cultural contexts influence pragmatic perception and use because this may help to understand whether cultural fit or mismatch determines social language production in L2. Secondly, overall, teaching methods impact language competence globally; however, the literature lacks evidence of particular pedagogical practices that affect pragmatic proficiency in EFL and ESL contexts. It would be more helpful to identify and examine previous research that has focused on the comparison of explicit, immersion and tasksbased instruction in the development of pragmatic knowledge. Furthermore, more empirical studies of how explicit pragmatic pedagogy (i.e. teaching of speech INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “INTERNATIONAL AND HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE, PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS”, OCTOBER 30-31, 2025 439 acts and politeness strategies) influences learners’ proficiency in actual use are warranted. Thirdly, the nature of connection between proficiency and pragmatics remains unclear and some studies (Asif et al., 2019; Yang, 2015) indicated that even higher-level learners are likely to fail pragmatics if they lack enough contextual background. Focusing on this relationship at a finergrained level of analysis for different levels of proficiency and in various learning contexts may help to elucidate the way in which and the extent to which linguistic knowledge influences pragmatic competence.In the Forum article “Pragmatic Activities for the Speaking Classroom,” Joseph Siegel provides useful information for teaching pragmatics in a speaking class through activities for request scenarios. The teacher comes up with a number of scenarios in which a request would be made. Each scenario has certain specific features, such as age of speakers, context, past relationship of speakers, and so on. The teacher gives the scenario, and students decide how they would make a request. The teacher and students go over the responses and talk about why a certain response is appropriate for the situation and why others are not appropriate. The teacher can then extend that activity with “a range of interlocutors.” For the range of interlocutors, the teacher writes down a list of different people on the board with numbers next to each person. For example, 1 = elderly man, 2 = woman in a business suit, and 3 = a boy younger than you. The teacher then provides a scenario. For example: You have your hands full. You drop a bag and can’t pick it up. (Examples are taken from the article.) Students then decide which person they are talking to and provide an appropriate request. Conclusion The classroom is a safe place for learners to experiment with using language in different ways, so it is a good place for them to acquire pragmatic competence. Pragmatic instruction often focuses on asking learners to determine the best way to communicate in a certain situation given the context and the culture, and is generally linked to language functions. A lesson in pragmatics might be related to content in the textbook. For instance, when going over a textbook unit on apologies, the instructor can add information concerning how people apologize in the home language and the target language. Alternatively, teachers might add in lessons in pragmatics because of student need. If, for example, the instructor notices that students come across as too direct in the target language, the teacher can prepare a lesson on politeness. Although instruction in pragmatics is not always present in the curriculum or in textbooks, there are numerous resources for teaching pragmatics—many of which can be found on the American English website. As teachers, we can learn about the pragmatics of a language and different ways to teach it by researching the language functions we are teaching. Pragmatics is an important part of learning language because it helps learners to avoid miscommunication and to communicate as they wish across cultures and languages. Want to learn more? Visit the Teacher’s Corner group on Facebook! The AE Teacher's Corner is a closed Facebook group originally created for readers of Teacher's Corner on americanenglish.state.gov. As our group has grown, it has taken shape into a dynamic community of English language teachers and learners who learn together, collaborate and support each other. Every month we feature a new article from Teacher's Corner and throughout the month, participants are encouraged to engage in extended conversation, exchange teaching resources related to the theme, and participate in contests. REFERENCES 1. Language Teaching Research, 26(5), 847-866. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168820913539 Asif, M., Deng, Z., Hussain, Z., Rasool, S., & INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “INTERNATIONAL AND HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE, PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS”, OCTOBER 30-31, 2025 440 Dean, V. (2019). The Case Study of Pragmatic Failure in Second Language of Pakistani Students. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9(4), 200-208. 2. Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT), 12(1), 1-14. doi: https://doi.org/10.4018/IJCALLT.291113 Ziafar, M. (2020). The Influence of Explicit, Implicit, and Contrastive Lexical Approaches on Pragmatic Competence: The Case of Iranian EFL Learners. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 58(1), 103-131.