L2: Volume 08 Issue 3

Symbolic Competence in Interaction: Mutuality, Memory, and Resistance in a Peer Tutoring Context

Symbolic competence (Kramsch, 2009, 2011) has been proposed as a crucial addition to world language learning, as it enables a language learner to negotiate the complex symbolism of words, expressions, and discursive events from the target culture in order to reference them effectively and in the appropriate contexts. However, fostering symbolic competence is still a challenge within the day to day reality of the world language classroom. Moreover, there is still little research on what symbolic competence looks like in interaction. In this article I examine a peer tutoring context as one possibility for examining symbolic competence in interaction. Using a close discourse analysis …

Creating a Social Context Through Film: Teaching L2 Pragmatics as a Locally Situated Process

Pragmatics is an underrepresented area in L2 instruction, in spite of disciplinary emphasis on communicative skills (de Pablos-Ortega, 2011; Eisenchlas, 2011). Films have been shown to be capable of mitigating this lack of pedagogically prepared materials (Abrams, 2014; Kambara, 2011; Fernández-Guerra, 2008; Grant & Starks, 2001; Washburn, 2001), and may provide scaffolding for teaching pragmatics as a dynamic, context-dependent phenomenon. In line with current research in pragmatics …