Teaching Pragmatics in the Foreign Language Classroom: Grammar as a Communicative Resource

This article focuses on the teaching of pragmatics in the Spanish as a Foreign Language classroom and examines the role of grammar as a communicative resource. It also aims to highlight the importance of teaching pragmatics from beginning levels of language instruction, with the spotlight on speech acts at the discourse level. After the concept of pragmatic knowledge, as one component of communicative language ability, is reviewed, this article will evaluate proposed pedagogical models for the teaching of pragmatics. We will then present ways for teaching grammar as a communicative resource through a look at the pragmatic functions of grammatical expressions used to express communicative action, such as the conditional, the imperfect, tag questions, impersonal expressions, and adverbials. The importance of classroom input and the role of pragmatic variation when teaching pragmatics in the classroom are also addressed. Finally, we propose a four-step pedagogical model for the teaching of pragmatics with online activities that can be used directly in the classroom, and this article closes with a recommendation that pragmatics be integrated into the language curriculum.