The role of pragmatic socialization in building learners’ pragmatic competence from English teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

This article provides empirical evidence regarding Indonesian EFL teachers’ perceptions about pragmatic competence and the role of pragmatic socialization to develop learners’ pragmatic competence. Considerable viewpoints were obtained by analyzing the data collected from 104 Indonesian EFL teachers using questionnaires and focus group interviews. While still maintaining the conventional way of teaching English, these teachers admitted the importance of socializing English pragmatics to their students. They indicated that EFL learners needed to learn the socio-cultural norms of the target language in order to communicate appropriately. Teachers viewed politeness essential for learners to understand that failure to meet the required action might break interpersonal relationships. Therefore, they agreed that language classrooms should utilize interactive strategic tasks that involved learner-learner and teacher-learner interactions to foster the presence of pragmatic socialization in the classrooms. Even though most teachers were unsure about how they would put their ideas in practice, it was evident that teachers perceived both explicit and implicit language socialization processes promising and worth implementing. Future research may investigate how teachers socialize English pragmatics to EFL learners in real classroom settings.