PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT IN L2

Mastery of linguistic/grammatical aspects of a language alone cannot make a language learner competent enough to communicate with other speakers of that language without any problem to understand and to be understood. Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that explores social and cultural elements of language. Pragmatics focuses on implicit meanings of utterances. Language learners, therefore, need to develop this subfield of linguistics parallel to other components of language. In this paper some individual variables related to development of pragmatics in second language, as well as the role of explicit instruction and teaching material are reviewed. Although being subject to direct exposure to the target language in an environment where the very language is spoken may have some effects on developing pragmatic competence, it cannot be said that these effects are significant. Cooperative interaction and motivation, on the other hand, may contribute significantly to the development of this aspect of language in learners. Advanced foreign language learners who are not able to communicative effectively due to lack of sufficient pragmatic knowledge in second language show the importance of direct and explicit instruction and inclusion of explicit information on pragmatics in language textbooks. Awareness-raising tasks included in the classes and books help language learners improve their pragmatic competence.