Our recent presentation at the state TexTESOL was a blast!  Here’s a link to the handout:  Aligning OC & Pragmatics.  We talked about pragmatics, grammar, vocabulary, and lexicogrammatical chunks. We laughed a lot too.

The audience role-played two colleagues meeting for dinner at a TESOL conference, under slightly uncomfortable circumstances.  Lots of great one-liners came out of that:  I can’t talk about that!  It is what it is.  What a day!

Teachers can use the handout to create their own activities to focus students’ attention on different pragmatic elements in real-world conversations.   There are also role-play rubrics and activities for the classroom.  Please let us know if you try these out with your students.  We’d love to hear about your experiences.

– Alice & Colin