Apparently, it is important to teach ESL students about pragmatics. Really, it isn’t just pragmatics that plays a role, because culture does too. I know that we can’t prepare our students for every situation, but it is upsetting when you feel like that you could have prevented a negative experience for a student if only you had prepared them better.
One of the students is a hostess / greeter at a chain restaurant. Tuesday, she came in to class and I could tell that she was upset about something, but I didn’t really want to pry into her personal life. Finally, about halfway through the class, she mentioned what was bothering her. A man came into the restaurant, so the student / hostess asked “how many?” The man replied “one.” To which the student (whose only “fault” in my opinion is in not knowing all the pragmatic and cultural implications of English) said, “just one?” Upon hearing this (as told to me by the student), the man asked to speak with the manager and proceeded to gripe and complain about how insulting it was for the hostess to use the word just.
I felt / feel bad because I should have been more proactive in anticipating what errors that the students could make, especially related to social interaction. I also know that I am probably being too hard on myself and cannot expect to be able to teach them everything about English and prevent them from ever making any errors or mistakes.
What I am having trouble with figuring out is about the timing of lessons. It is definitely important for beginners to understand phonetics, morphology, and syntax. Intermediate students could then build on those concepts and add in some semantics. Finally, the advanced students would add in pragmatics. The problem with this “perfect” plan is due to the fact that there is always more to cover on any of these topics and that all speakers need these, no matter their proficiency. So, how can a class be structured so that students are able to learn what they need to know by the time they need to know it?
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