Teaching refusal strategies in the foreign language classroom: a focus on inductive-deductive treatments

Abstract

The present paper attempts to present a pedagogical model for the integration of pragmatic competence in the foreign language classroom by following an inductive-deductive approach. For the sake of the current article, the pragmatic feature that has been chosen is the speech act of refusals. The rationale behind this selection is based on the fact that refusals are seen as a face-threatening act which may confront listeners’ expectations (Eslami 2010: 217). Hence, learners should obtain a particular pragmatic expertise to outperform refusals successfully and that is the reason why the teaching of this speech act should be integrated in foreign language settings.

Keywords

• pragmatic competence
• instruction
• inductive-deductive approach
• speech acts
• refusals
• foreign language classroom