Developing Sociolinguistic Competence in a Second Language

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses some exercises designed to help the second language learner develop both receptive and productive sociolinguistic competence. The exercises stress the notion of appropriate usage and the potential differences between the sociolinguistic norms of the source and target languages; the importance of recognizing the social meaning or latent function of utterances; and the desirability of learners making an active contribution to the development of conversations. The process of acquiring sociolinguistic competence is a gradual one for the individual in his native speech community. A second language learner, however, generally lacks time and opportunity to acquire sociolinguistic rules naturally, and teachers must therefore attempt to devise methods and materials which will facilitate and accelerate the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in a second language. Paulston (1974) suggests a variety of useful techniques to help students to express themselves appropriately in different social contexts. In this paper we would like to discuss some of the exercises which we have found useful in developing sociolinguistic competence. In particularly we aimed to develop (1) an awareness of contexts where the sociolinguistic norms of the first language were likely to interfere with those of the target language; (2) the ability to interpret the social meaning as well as the referential meaning of exchanges; (3) the ability to take the initiative in developing a The exercises were developed during a summer course for 55 adult foreign students in New Zealand. The students were by no means a homogeneous group; they came from Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, Chile, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, New Caledonia, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Thailand, and The People's Republic of China. None of them had lived in a monolingual English-speaking community before, and they all expressed a desire to improve their ability to understand and communicate effectively with native-speakers in ordinary everyday conversation. Sociolinguistic Interference. The adolescent or adult second language learner is by no means sociolinguistically naive since he has already acquired the complex sociolinguistic system used in his native speech community. In learning how to use and interpret the sociolinguistic rules of English he must develop an awareness