Bringing Pragmatics Activities in a Classroom: An Effort to Shape Students’ Language Competence

Abstract

The  central  point  of  this  article  is  that  pragmatics  is  deeply  rooted  in people’s communication  ability.  Being  able  to  interact  and  communicate  with  others  in  various situations  becomes  the  pivotal  goal  in  teaching  English  as  a  foreign  language.  Yet, little empirical  evidence  shows  how  to  deploy  pragmatics  awareness,  particularly,  in  vocational educational setting. To fill this gap, this special affinity requires the English teachers to explore the  activities  in  speaking  classroom  in  which  these  help  students  use  appropriate  expression and have accurate interpretation to result successful communication. There are three activities; listening  to  passages  about  complaining  in  other  cultures,  presenting  L2  strategies  for complaining and performing role play with discussion, which fleshed out procedural activities to  trigger  successful  communication.  The  article  contributes  a  deep  insight  of pragmatic competence as a fruitful context for building the students’ language competence.