Concepto de ambientes de aprendizaje

and focus-on-forms together with Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis as a rationale for teaching pragmatics as well as a guideline for designing their proposed treatments Roughly speaking, the early version of the Interaction Hypothesis states that the only necessary condition for instructed language acquisition is through exposure to input that is made comprehensible though negotiation of meaning and not just negotiation of input as Krashen's comprehensible input states. Negotiation of meaning refers to modifications in the structure of conversation whereas negotiation of input is confined to modification of form. Swain's Comprehensible Output Hypothesis and Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis have made Long accept a role for a sort of incidental focus on form in instructed L2 acquisition. The former makes it necessary to engage learners in tasks that require them to produce language. This, it is argued, pushes learners to extend their current Interlanguage System and generate more comprehensible input in the feedback they receive (see Ellis, 2005). Therefore, Long makes a distinction between focus on forms in which forms are graded and sequenced and the teaching of forms is planned and intentional; and focus on form in which form-focused instruction incidentally occurs in classes dominated by communicative tasks that enhance the negotiation of meaning. Schmidt (1993) argues that noticing is essential, not only for acquiring forms, but also for acquiring pragmatic knowledge. According to his Noticing Hypothesis, exposure to pragmatic knowledge in natural settings or inside the classroom may be necessary, but not sufficient for making input intake. Thus, learners' attention should be drawn to certain features. Complete subliminal learning, it is argued, is simply out of the question. As Schmidt (1993) puts it:

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"Simple exposure to sociolinguistically appropriate input is unlikely to be sufficient for second language acquisition of pragmatic and discoursal knowledge because the linguistic realizations of pragmatic functions are sometimes opaque to language learners and because the relevant contextual factors to be noticed are likely to be defined differently or may be nonsalient for the learner. Second language learners may fail to experience the crucial noticings for years (p.35)."

Ellis (2003) makes use of Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis in his Consciousness Raising model. According to Ellis, form focused instruction results in raising learner's awareness of the feature in question. Awareness-raising triggers two cognitive processes. One is noticing the feature in question within the available comprehensible input and the other is comparing this feature to his/ her current interlanguage system. Once the learner reaches the stage at which s/he is ready to acquire it, this feature is internalized or becomes intake.

The implication of current theory of L2 acquisition is that learners need to be engaged in communicative tasks that provide them with comprehensible pragmatic input as well as explicit pragmatic instruction that raises their awareness of pragmatic features that may not be salient to them in communicative tasks such as role plays.

Effectiveness of instruction in second language pragmatics

As pointed out above, pragmatic instruction is the most recent paradigm of research of ILP. In the last few years, many classroom-based studies aiming at establishing the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction have been conducted. A number of reviews of many of those studies are now available (Belz, 2007; Cohen, 2008; Eun, & Tadayoushi, 2006; Rose, 2005). In addition, several PhD studies focusing on pragmatics instruction in

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foreign language classrooms have been conducted in the last few years (e.g. Jernigan, 2007; Vellenga, 2008; Mwinyelle, 2005; Reuda, 2004; Sawako, 2007; Vellenga, 2008), and several papers have been published in journals (e.g. Jiang, 2006; Liu & Zhao, 2007). Most of those studies focus on the teaching and testing of certain speech acts.

Eun, & Tadayoushi‘s, (2006) review of research on the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction is especially interesting because research synthesis using meta-analysis usually requires very rigid procedure for selecting and analyzing studies which meet specific selection criteria. To conduct a meta-analysis review, the issue in question should have enough data sources to be able to be investigated by many researchers. The two reviewers assert that there were two earlier claims in the literature regarding the adequate availability of studies focusing on instructed pragmatic development, whereas Kasper and Rose (2003) claimed that it was still premature to conduct a meta-analysis as there were not enough studies to consider. Another earlier review reported that there were more than two dozen studies on instructed pragmatic development. Since the review started in 2003 with 34 relevant published studies, it is expected that the number of published studies must have increased significantly since that time.

Out of the total number of studies investigated (34), only 13 studies met the criteria set for the analysis. Eun, & Tadayoushi, (2006) sum up the findings of their meta-analysis:

"Results of the meta-analysis revealed that direct instruction made a notable difference over no instruction, and that explicit instruction was in some cases more beneficial than implicit instruction. Further analysis yielded suggestive but inconclusive evidence that the type of outcome measure may increase the observed learning benefits, and that compared to short-term pragmatic instruction (i.e., less than five hours), long-term instruction (i.e., more than five hours) is likely to result in larger instructional effects (p.165).‖

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They also make a number of comments related to the studies reviewed. For example, most of the studies reported the positive effect of formal explicit instruction on pragmatic competence. Thus, pragmatic instruction facilitates the acquisition of certain pragmatic features that are difficult to acquire only through exposure. They further add that "Many interventional pragmatics studies feature techniques on the most explicit end of the continuum, and typically include teacher fronted instruction on pragmalinguistic forms or sociopragmatic rules (p.169)." As such, they classify the treatments used in teaching pragmatics into two categories: explicit vs. implicit treatments. The former are usually characterized by "a complete disclosure of the goal of the lesson", "frequent use of metalanguage", "unidirectional information flow from teacher to learners", and "structural exercises". The latter type of treatments are characterized by "the use of consciousness raising activities", the use of self discovery of target features in given input through the analysis of native speaker output in spoken or written form, and the use of group-based consciousness raising activities as advanced organizers preceding exposure to comprehensible input tasks to maximize the possibility for noticing. Another interesting type of consciousness raising activity used by many studies is known as retrospective analysis of self-elicited data or audio- or video-recordings of learners‘ own production in performing production tasks such as pair conversations, role-plays, writing tasks and previous group discussions. These are viewed as some sort of reflection enhancing tasks. Summing up the extreme end of implicit instruction in pragmatics, Eun, & Tadayoushi, (2006) note that:

"Instructed pragmatics studies at the very end of the implicit pole hardly involve external manipulation of learners‘ attention to target forms. Most often realized as the implicit counterpart of the explicit experimental conditions in type-of-instruction studies, purely implicit instruction

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conditions are largely characterized by sole exposure to authentic language data..., no direction to guide learners‘ attention to language form of interest, no use of metalanguage, and absence of any type of consciousness raising activities (p.171)."

In other words, the purely implicit treatments will consist mainly of pragmatics-based communicative tasks with no attempt to draw the learners' attention to specific linguistic features.

Challenges faced in teaching and testing pragmatic competence in a foreign language learning context:

1. Paucity of pragmatics courses in both pre-service teacher education programs