UMR 7320 : Bases, Corpus, Langage

titre: Classroom learning of English L2 requests: Input and interactional opportunities in French secondary schools
auteur: Aisha Siddiqa, Shona Whyte
article: Language Teaching Research, 2021, pp.136216882110649. ⟨10.1177/13621688211064932⟩
annee_publi: 2021
resume: With today’s strong focus on communicative competence in second language (L2) classrooms, speech acts like suggestions, requests, refusals, and apologies are often investigated in interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) as well as instructional pragmatics. Even though there is strong evidence in ILP research that purports that L2 learners respond well to pragmatic instruction (Taguchi, 2015), the teaching of L2 pragmatics is not always prioritized in textbooks, teaching programmes or teacher education (Barron, 2016; Savvidou & Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2019) with the consequence that pragmatic learning can only occur incidentally. The present study examines opportunities to acquire L2 requests for 308 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners across 7 years of instruction in French secondary schools, investigating textbooks preferred by teachers, classroom interaction (39 hours), and teacher perspectives (semi-structured interviews with 10 teachers). After a pragmatic analysis of 15 EFL textbooks with a focus on requests, the study examines the incidence of metapragmatic input in 39 hours of teaching in 13 classes at 3 levels, and relates interactional patterns with interview data from the 10 teachers concerned. Findings suggest limited pragmatic input in both textbooks and classroom interaction. By comparing the profiles of teachers who encouraged L2 requests with those who did not, the study offers new explanations for L2 learners’ limited pragmatic development which also broadly corroborate previous findings of somewhat limited potential for L2 pragmatic development in obligatory school contexts.
typdoc: Article dans une revue
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titre: Bridging interlanguage pragmatics and second language teaching: from classroom research to classroom practice
auteur: Aïsha Siddiqa, Shona Whyte
article: Des langues étrangères pour tous : didactique et méthodologie, Sep 2018, Lausanne, Switzerland
annee_publi: 2018
typdoc: Communication dans un congrès
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titre: The acquisition of politeness by young EFL learners in France : an exploratory study of interlanguage pragmatic development
auteur: Aisha Siddiqa
article: Linguistics. COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015 - 2019), 2018. English. ⟨NNT : 2018AZUR2007⟩
annee_publi: 2018
resume: This study of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) investigates empirical data on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in French secondary schools to contribute to our understanding of the development of second language (L2) politeness. With the increase in multilingual interactions around the globe, awareness of what is polite or impolite has become indispensable. However, pragmatic skills are generally not easily acquired in foreign language settings. The observation that even advanced learners do not necessarily exhibit target-like norms has led to calls for further investigation (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996; Bardovi-Harlig, 1999). Although there is now a solid body of research in this area, most studies have focused on adult learners (Kasper & Rose, 1999) using written discourse completion tasks (see e.g., Hill, 1997; Billmyer & Varghese, 2000; Su, 2010; Jebahi, 2011) to elicit explicit pragmatic knowledge (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; 2013). The present study seeks to extend the scope of ILP research by focusing on a large group of young, beginning learners using mixed methods including a cartoon oral production task, open-ended role plays, and naturalistic data from classroom video recordings. Participants were some 240 secondary school learners at three different levels (age 11 to 18) to allow the tracking of ILP development with language proficiency. To contextualise findings, secondary data was collected in the form of additional analysis of classroom films, textbook analysis, and teacher interviews. The analysis of request data is based on the seminal L2 discourse analytic framework cross-cultural speech act research project (Blum-Kula et al., 1989) which allows the analysis of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic dimensions of requests. L2 pragmatic development was observed almost exclusively in terms of increased frequency of pragmalinguistic strategies, particularly by the end of upper secondary school, less so in terms of range of strategies or sociopragmatic features, and this across all data collection methods. French baseline data (L1) revealed similar development, suggesting that L1 transfer may be one explanation for the L2 development observed in the study, particularly since analysis of secondary data revealed little focus on ILP in teaching programs.
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titre: L2 pragmatic input in EFL classrooms in France: An acquisitional issue
auteur: Aïsha Siddiqa
article: 9th AILA-Europe Junior Researcher Meeting in Applied Linguistics, Sep 2017, Vienna, Austria
annee_publi: 2017
typdoc: Poster de conférence
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titre: Opportunities for developing L2 politeness strategies in EFL classrooms in France
auteur: Aisha Siddiqa
article: ESSE, Aug 2016, Galway, Ireland
annee_publi: 2016
resume: The present study explores the development of politeness strategies in requests among young English as foreign language (EFL) learners in France. Research in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has demonstrated the inadequacies of traditional foreign language classrooms to develop pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig & Taylor 2003). The integration of pragmatics in classroom activities is therefore advocated (Takahashi 2010), but more research is needed, particularly with respect to younger learners (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999) and methodology (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 2005b). This study extends the scope of ILP research by focusing on a larger group of younger learners, using multiple methods including a cartoon oral production task, role plays, classroom films, textbook analysis, and participant interviews. This paper analyses the observational data collected by classroom filming in French secondary schools, involving some 250 EFL learners from three different levels (approximately 11, 14, 17 years). The data set includes empirical examples of politeness strategies in requests, with analysis based on Blum-Kulka et al. (1989). The paper also involves a critical analysis of the opportunities in classrooms to practice L2 pragmatics. Preliminary results suggest that the learners’ range of politeness strategies is quite restricted; they use French in classrooms predominantly; and the classroom activities mainly focus on L2 lexico-grammatical functions rather than aspects of L2 pragmatics.
typdoc: Communication dans un congrès
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titre: Beyond “classroom English”
auteur: Aisha Siddiqa
article: Colloque international du LAIRDIL: Regards pluridisciplinaires sur la créativité et l’innovation en langues étrangères, Dec 2015, Toulouse, France
annee_publi: 2015
resume: Although traditional foreign language (FL) classrooms generally focus on the acquisition of vocabulary and grammatical structures, research has shown the inadequacies of structural approaches for developing the kind of pragmatic competence which is essential for communication in the multilingual networks of the modern world. Of particular importance in this regard is knowledge of politeness, an aspect of second language competence which is not perceived as obligatory (Leech, 2014) but is nonetheless indispensable for the maintenance of ‘social order’ and ‘human cooperation’ (Gumperz, 1987). Some thirty years of interlanguage (IL) research have shown that in traditional classrooms, more emphasis is given to lexicogrammatical functions of language rather than sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic aspects (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Kasper, 2001; Bardovi-Harlig & Mahan-Taylor, 2003). Drilling pupils to produce formulaic utterances such as asking permission to leave their seats or open a window, which textbooks often refer to as “classroom English”, is unlikely to help learners in more complex or creative language use beyond the classroom. For this reason, instruction in pragmatics is recommended Takahashi 2010), but this should not be restricted to ‘norm-referenced rules of thumb’ and, in the case of politeness to ‘overgeneralization’ of a restricted set of formulae (Van Campernolle 2014). Instead, pragmatic instruction should enable learners to make creative and spontaneous judgments to select and modify utterances according to the context. In addition, recent reforms in FL teaching in much of Europe to meet the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) recommendations are encouraging teachers to give more weight to pragmatic and sociolinguistic skills. However, little investigation of learners’ pragmatic development has been carried out, and even less with secondary school learners (Kontra, 2003). Hence, the time is ripe for research into the role of classroom activities and textbooks in developing this type of competence, including both a) the role of learners in displaying creativity to make use of the opportunities available in classroom, and b) the role of teachers in introducing innovative ways to teach second language pragmatics. The present study addresses these questions by exploring politeness strategies in requests by secondary EFL learners in France using elicitation tasks and classroom observation. This study replicates Rose (2000, 2009) which used an innovative cartoon oral production task (COPT) to elicit samples of requests and apologies from young EFL pupils in Hong Kong schools. Our research involves pupils at three levels of middle and high school in France, and our data include a) COPT audio recordings following Rose (2000, 2009) supplemented by b) an analysis of textbooks, and c) additional data in the form of video recordings of classroom activities. Data analysis is based on Blum-Kulka et al.'s (1989) categorization of requests. The study aims to document current classroom practice in this area, identifying instances of both creative language use by learners and innovative teaching methods by teachers, and perhaps recommending ways to encourage such important opportunities.
typdoc: Communication dans un congrès
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titre: The use and acquisition of politeness strategies among EFL learners in France: An exploratory study of interlanguage pragmatic development
auteur: Aisha Siddiqa
article: The Ninth International Im/Politeness Conference,, Jul 2015, Athens, Greece
annee_publi: 2015
typdoc: Communication dans un congrès
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UMR 7320 : Bases, Corpus, Langage

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