Social factors and pragmatic competence
A. How do social factors and pragmatic competence interact with and affect SLA? (Your answer should be around one third of a page in length.)
B. Describe the stages involved in converting input to output for the second language learner. (Your answer should be around two thirds of a page in length.)
C. Discuss affect, motivation and aptitude, addressing the central findings on each of these topics. (Your answer should be about half a page.)
D. Describe the main findings on age difference on SLA. What benefits do children have over adults in SLA? What benefits do adults have over children in SLA? (Your answer should be about half a page.)
Sample Solution
Pragmatics are made of predictable instructions of language which are manifested in the production and interpretation of utterances. In particular, it helps the speakers analyze the conditions that make the utterances acceptable in some situations. Therefore, a lack of mastery of conversational norms involved in the production of speech acts may result in a breakdown in communication. According to Thomas (1983), a failure in considering these parameters results in communication breakdown or misunderstanding. Thus, pragmatic competence is the knowledge that speaker-hearer uses to engage in communication, including how speech acts are successfully performed. In language teaching, communicative competence is defined as the students’ ability to
