It's hard to get students to use speech acts correctly but this is one of the main topics in my upcoming speech "Teaching world standard English: sociocultural considerations".
I found an interesting lesson idea on teaching students to give compliments at http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~eli/teachers/activities/tesl2/cs/ethno/complimenting.htm and a more in depth lesson plan at http://exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/pragmatics/ishihara.htm. The last one is one chapter of a brilliant online resource for teaching pragmatics: http://exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/pragmatics.htm.
Posted by James Trotta at October 6, 2004 4:07 AMESL blog is one of many Blogs for learning English & teaching English. Translation services information.