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This study examines strategies employed by students at Cape Breton University (Canada) in performing the speech act of responding to compliments in eight different situations. The data were collected by means of a Discourse Completion Task questionnaire. The findings suggest that the 25 participants exclusively use verbal responses and display a very strong preference for complex responses (e.g. thanking + commenting, shifting credit + offering) to boost the face of the compliment giver. Contrary to several studies that found appreciation tokens (e.g. ‘thank you`) to be the most preferred responses in many English-speaking regions, the respondents in our study most commonly combine appreciation tokens with comments. Overall, the participants do not use negative compliment responses and they generally employ appreciation tokens in the construction of complex responses. The present study is a contribution to research on speech acts in Canadian English and it offers a basis for comparison with other regional varieties of English or other languages.

Many studies have shed light on rater criteria for assessing the performance of language skills (e.g., Eckes, 2005). However, the interface between rater assess- ment and interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has remained largely unnoticed. To address this interface, this study explored the ratings native (NES) and nonnative English speaking (NNES) teachers assigned to second language (L2) refusal pro- duction and the criteria they applied in their ratings. To this end, 50 NES and 50 NNES teachers participated in rating L2 refusal production of EFL learners that included responses to a 6-item written discourse completion task. The data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative analysis showed that na- tive teachers applied 11 criteria and nonnative teachers applied 6 criteria in their pragmatic ratings. Reasoning/explanation was the leading criterion in teacher assessment among native raters, whereas politeness was the main criterion for nonnative ratings. Quantitative analysis documented variation in the frequency of drawing on rating criteria and significant differences in ratings, with NNES teachers being more lenient and divergent in their ratings. The results suggest there is a gap between NES and NNES teachers in terms of rating criteria, strictness, and convergence in rating.

1. Pragmatics in language teaching 2. Evaluating the empirical evidence: Grounds for instruction in pragmatics? 3. Classroom research on interlanguage pragmatics Pragmatic and grammatical awareness: A function of learning environment? 5. Why can't learners of JFL distinguish polite form impolite speech styles? 6. A longitudinal study of the development of expression of alignment in JFL 7. Acquiring French interactional norms through instruction 8. Inductive and deductive teaching of compliments and compliment responses 9. The role of input enhancement in developing pragmatic competence 10. Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines: Japanese sumimasen 11. Explicit instruction and JFL learners' use of interactional discourse markers 12. Use of address terms on the German Speaking Test 13. Indicators for pragmatic instruction: Some quantitative tools 14 Pragmatics tests: Different purposes, different tests.

In order to give language learners a fighting chance outside the classroom, teachers must provide them with consciousness-raising opportunities for developing pragmatic awareness. By attending to pragmatic factors in second-language (L2) situations, students will be better able to make informed decisions in negotiating effective communication., This article examines the potential use of the pragmatic discourse completion task (DCT) as a springboard for discussion in the L2 classroom. A description of a DCT used in a study involving advanced L2 learners at the University of Alberta (Ranta, 2002) is provided. The author also provides suggestions for developing students' pragmatic awareness.

L2 learners often develop grammatical competence in the absence of concomitant pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1990, 1993). In an attempt to better understand how this developmental stage arises, this study explores the extent to which instructed L2 learners of English are aware of differences in learners' and target-language production in grammar, which addresses the accuracy of utterances, and pragmatics, which addresses the appropriateness of utterances given specific situations, speakers, and content. We used a videotape with 20 scenarios to test 543 learners and their teachers (N = 53) in two countries (Hungary and the U.S.) as well as a secondary sample of 112 EFL speakers in Italy. The results show that whereas EFL learners and their teachers consistently identified and ranked grammatical errors as more serious than pragmatic errors, ESL learners and their teachers showed the opposite pattern, ranking pragmatic errors as more serious than grammatical errors. We discuss the possible causes of this pattern and its implications for teaching.

/ have given the term pragmatic failure' to the inability to understand 'what is meant by what is said'. In this paper I argue that pragmatic failure is an area of cross-cultural communication breakdown which has received very little attention from language teachers. I suggest that there is one area of pragmatic failure ('pragmalinguistic failure') which is fairly easy to overcome. It is simply a question of highly conventionalized usage which can be taught quite straightforwardly as 'part of the grammar'. The second area ('sociopragmatic failure') is much more difficult to deal with, since it involves the student's system of beliefs as much as his/her knowledge of the language. I argue that it is essential to avoid prescriptivism in this very sensitive area of language in use. To do so we must draw on insights from theoretical pragmatics and develop ways of heightening and refining students' metapragmatic awareness, so that they are able to express themselves as they choose.

Using Spencer-Oatey's (2002, 2004) rapport management approach, this research investigated the role of proficiency when responding to particular reprimands. To make this end come true, a six binary Discourse Completion Task was utilized. The results revealed intermediate learners claimed autonomy and thus refused to be controlled and also violated respect and involvement components more than advanced EFL learners did. Also, intermediate learners tried to restructure the problem by depicting empathy and taking an interactional line more than their advanced counterparts did. Advanced EFL learners, on the other hand, more frequently respected the cost-benefit considerations.

Thanking is one of the most commonly used speech act and major instruments which strengthen the bonds between the members of a society. This study attempted to study the most frequently- used thanking strategies in Ilami Kurdish language. To this end, a DCT (discourse completion task) will be applied. DCT represents various scenarios where the participants are asked to write down the terms they use to thank others. The participants involve 117 people from different walks of life, poor or rich, educated or uneducated, young or old, and the like. The analysis of data based on Cheng's (2005) taxonomy of 8 strategies to express gratitude. To analysis the collected data both descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized. The results revealed that ‘thanking’, ‘positive feeling’ and ‘appreciation’ were the most frequently used strategies among subjects of under 30 years respectively and ‘thanking’, ‘positive feeling’ and ‘appreciation’ were common used strategies among subjects of above 30 years respectively. Regarding the gender of participants ‘thanking’, ‘positive feeling’ and ‘appreciation’ were the most frequently used strategies among male subjects respectively and in responding to thanking strategies ‘thanking’ and ‘positive feeling’ were the general tendency of females participant. EFL learners can be benefited from these findings to develop their pragmatic competence.

In this paper we investigate the interplay between lexicon, syntax, intonation and pragmatics in Sardinian polar questions. To this end, a production study was designed to elicit polar questions with different bias and polarity conditions by means of the Discourse Completion Task Methodology. The resulting data were then prosodically and syntactically annotated using Praat. The results can be summarized as follows. Regarding lexico-syntactic markers, the particle a functions as a mitigator or politeness marker, whereas constituent fronting and negation correspond to positive and negative polarity respectively. In addition, two main intonational patterns can be distinguished: the ¡H+L* L% pattern, which expresses “lack of bias”, and the ¡H*+L L- pattern, which conveys the speaker bias towards the proposition. La entonación y sus interfaces en las preguntas absolutas del sardo. Este artículo investiga la interacción entre sintaxis, entonación, pragmática y partículas interrogativas en las preguntas absolutas del sardo. Con tal propósito, se diseñó un experimento de producción mediante la metodología de la Tarea de Compleción del Discurso que permite obtener interrogativas absolutas en diferentes condiciones de sesgo y polaridad. Los datos se analizaron prosódica y sintácticamente mediante el programa Praat. Los resultados se pueden resumir como sigue: en relación con los marcadores léxico-sintácticos, la partícula a funciona como un mitigador o marcador de cortesía, mientras que la anteposición de constituyentes y la negación se corresponden con la polaridad positiva y negativa respectivamente. En cuanto a la prosodia, se distinguen dos patrones entonativos principales: el patrón ¡H+L* L%, que expresa “ausencia de sesgo”, y el patrón ¡H*+L L%, que codifica el sesgo del hablante hacia la proposición. This research was funded by projects FFI2011-23829/FILO, BFU2012-31995 (awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness), and 2009 SGR 701 and 2014 SGR-925 (awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya).