CiC3-TB

NOTES FOR TEACHERS: THE GOLDEN RULES

Overview The Golden Rules were devised to help your students overcome three key cultural differences in speaking styles . The first rule deals with how silence is interpreted in conversation. The second focuses on answer length, and the third is concerned with patterns of turn-taking. All three rules are based on principles drawn from the linguistic field of pragmatics , which is the study of social language 4 use, or “the secret rules of language”. As noted researcher Bardovi-Harlig puts it, “ L2 pragmatics is the study of how learners come to know how-to-say what-to-whom-when .” 5 The Three Golden Rules section has been created to give your students a quick and easy overview of the pragmatic principles which form the core of this book . They are intuitive and easy to understand but take lots of practice to master because they involve becoming aware of how one speaks and learning new linguistic habits. The following notes are intended to help you teach this section, which we highly recommend you cover in the first class of the year . If you don’t have the approximately 45 minutes it will take to go through it then, try at least to cover page 9. This will take about 15 minutes and not only introduce the basic ideas, but also give your students a crystal clear idea of what sort of English they’ll be learning in your course. Later on, when you have more time, you can come back and go over each rule in turn. N OTES FOR P AGE 9 Here is a step-by-step plan you can use to cover page 9 with your students in the first class of the year: 1. Write the follow question up on the board: What kind of English will we learn? 2. In pairs, have students read Dialog 1 and then Dialog 2. After reading, the students should discuss which one is better, and why. 3. As students read and compare the dialogs, go around and privately elicit a few responses from them. Hopefully you will be able to get a few simple remarks, such as: “ Dialog 2 is friendlier. ”

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4. Now with the entire class, call on the students you just spoke with privately and ask them for their impressions. Write these up on the board and go over them. 5. Have each pair read the Japanese text above the dialogs aloud, taking turns after each line (“ pair reading ”). Reading aloud will let you know they are really taking in the information and when they all finish. 6. Recap the text using simple English. Even though this is the first class, they should be able to follow along with you because they have just read the info in their native language. You needn’t get too detailed here; simply emphasizing the connection between culture and language and the need to learn culturally appropriate ways of communicating should do the trick. End by answering the question you posed earlier on the board: This year we’ll learn how to be friendly in English . 7. Finally, clinch the deal by playing audio track 1-4, which will summarize the differences between the two dialogs and make a case for why students should master the Golden Rules in order to sound

For more information on pragmatics, check out the JALT Pragmatics SIG website: www.pragsig.org 4 Bardovi-Harlig, K. & Mehan-Taylor, R. (2009). Teaching pragmatics. English Teaching Forum 2003(41:3). 5

Notes for Teachers: Let’s Get Started! 20