Teaching and Assessing Listening - Week 4 - Pragmatic Processing

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 4 of the course Teaching and Assessing Listening for the master's in English teaching at ULACIT term IIICO 2022. In today's class we will explore the pragmatic processing by considering the role that context plays in giving meaning to a speaker's utterances. 

Today's Goals:

• Identify contextual factors that help listeners build meaning.
• Analyze speaker utterences to determine their intended meaning.
• Listen to speaker interactions and identify when conversational maxims are broken and why.

Guiding Questions: 

• What contextual factors must be considered during listening comprehension?
• How can Speech Act Theory help us better understand categories of speaker intention?
• What are the unwritten rules that allow us to cooperate during successful communication?

Warm Up: Take the Quiz

Part of being a competent listener means being able to identify a speaker's intentions. This ability goes beyond simply recognizing the words they say in order to infer the speaker's reason for saying it and what he/she hopes will be understood by the listener. Click the group link below and take the quiz. 

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

Topic 1: Introduction to Pragmatic Processing

Let's take a moment to review some of the concepts from your assigned reading. Click the group link below and follow the instructions in the document. Please have your study guide handy in case you need to reference it.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE 

Topic 2: Context, Speaker Roles, Intention, and Reference

Let's take a look at some of the ideas from the chapter in more depth. Click the group link below and follow the teacher's instructions. 

• Group Link: CLICK HERE 

Topic 3: Understanding Speech Act Theory

Let's now consider five broad categories of intended meaning behind speaker utterances. Click your group link below and follow the instructions in the document.  

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE

Topic 4: Unwritten Rules for Cooperation

Having successful conversation requires speakers to cooperate. In order to do this, they follow certain unwritten social rules. Let's look at those now. Click the group link and follow your teacher's instructions.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE 

Topic 5: Violating Grice's Maxims

Let's explore this topic more. Click play on the embedded video and add the names of your group members when it asks for your nickname. Be sure not to include punctuation (commas or periods) since the system won't understand. 

References:

Rost, M. (2026). Teaching and Researching Listening (3rd ed.). Routledge.