Abstract

The book focuses on investigating pragmatic learning, teaching and testing in foreign language contexts. The volume brings together research that investigates these three areas in different formal language learning settings. The number and variety of languages involved both as the first language (e.g. English, Finnish, Iranian, Spanish, Japanese) as well as the target foreign language (e.g. English, French, German, Indonesian, Korean, Spanish) makes the volume specially attractive for language educators in different sociocultural foreign language contexts. Additionally, the different approaches adopted by the researchers participating in this volume, such as information processing, sociocultural, language socialization, computer-mediated or conversation analysis should be of interest to graduate students and researchers working in the area of second language acquisition.

This volume is a timely contribution to ILP research. It provides an overview of recent research in the field of ILP. It takes into consideration the wide variety of approaches currently being used in classroom-based ILP research. The employment of both observational, as well as more experimental methods provides a holistic picture of the current state of research in ILP.

Eva Alcón Soler, senior lecturer at University Jaume I, has been working on discourse and language learning since 1993. Her research has covered, among others, interlanguage pragmatics, lingua franca communication, interaction and second language acquisition. Her recent publications have focussed on intercultural language use and language learning and on learning pragmatics in foreign language contexts.

Alicia Martínez-Flor is a lecturer in the Department of English Studies, Universitat Jaume I of Castellón, Spain, where she teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in EFL teaching methodology. As a result of her own learning process of the English language, she became interested in investigating the acquisition of pragmatic competence in foreign language contexts. Her research interests include second language acquisition and interlanguage pragmatics.

This book is a rich source of knowledge and inspiration for beginner and more advanced researchers, contributes to the development of the multilingual field of interlanguage pragmatics and provides valuable pedagogical implications for language teachers in the foreign language classroom.

This timely work represents a significant contribution to the literature, as it integrates research on pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing. This volume is highly recommended for students and researchers in applied linguistics as well as language teachers and educators.

Adopting a range of theoretical perspectives and focusing on a variety of learning contexts and approaches to learning, this timely collection of articles represents a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the teaching of pragmatics in the foreign language context. It is essential reading for interlanguage pragmaticists.