1. An Overview of Pragmatics and
Cultural Contexts in ELT
Classroom
DR. JAYSHREE SINGH
SENIOR FACULTIES, B. N. P. G. CO-ED.
COLLEGE, UDAIPUR (RAJASTHAN), INDIA
DR.JAYSHREE.SINGH@GMAIL.COM

2. Introduction
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 Socio-Cultural Perspectives/ Ethnography of
Communication
 Cosmopolitan milieu- multicultural and multilingual social set up
 Transnational shifts – moving across borders
 Globalized human capital – migrant labourers /workforce
 Indian human resource – native youths/ Indian human capital
 Language Education
 Localization (descending order) – native /grass-root level
 Multiculturalism and multilingualism(ascending order) –
social set-up of heterogeneous group with varied culture and language
 Pedagogy – Teaching method, approaches/ applications and techniques
 Pragmatic analyses – The practical solutions or results of the problem
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

3. Objectives
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 To understand the perspectives of language teacher
education
 To understand the difference between conventional
pedagogy and non-conventional ELT pedagogy
 To relate native order of cultural facts with the ELT
 To search interventions for learning and teaching
practices for English Language educators
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

4. A model of human response behaviour - theories
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 A cognitive theory of cultural meaning (1998)
C Strauss, N Quinn, books.google.com
“...... The meaning of a linguistic expression as the
typical stimulus that gives rise to it and the response it
evokes......”
 Experiencing and the creation of meaning: A
philosophical and psychological approach to the
subjective (1997) E Gendlin, books.google.com
“Meanings are formed and felt through an interaction
between experiencing and symbols or things”
 The Transactional Theory (1993) Louise M.
Rosenblatt, “a personal reading of the text” and “a view of
language activity that encompassed all linguistic modes
in their cultural context”
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

5. Pragmatics and Pedagogy for Globalised
Human Capital5( A Short Film)
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

6. Language –performers and language-learners
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 Teachers and students - participation both as performers &
learners
 Mother-tongue - is an important aspect of ethnography of
communication both for native &
non-native speakers.
 L2-target language – English to be learnt in classroom
 Nativity & Locality of L1 - is assimilated and Integrated with
L2
 Cultural contexts – acquisition process becomes difficult due
to multilingual &
multicultural society and even causes
implications for the existing native and non-native
exchange of communication
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

7. Learners‟ Environment
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The function of metalinguistics
 The teacher to be aware of the culture of the
students
 The teacher‟s culture also affects native‟s
mind, language, performance , learning and
competence
 The teacher has to understand the use of words
and language both in native and non-native
language
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

8. Survey of the Generations
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 The Baby Boomer Generation (1946-1964)
 Generation X (1965-80)
 Generation Y (1981-99)
 Generation Z (2000-till date)
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

9. Generation Y
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Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

10. Generation Z
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Characteristics
 Tech-savvy especially in doing class-works and home-
works
 Projection based aptitude achieved through web as
facilitator
 Multi-tasking to use mobile/ web and social sites both for
learning, chatting, and finishing up the assigned projects
or tasks
 Retention and attention span of Gen Z is short but
fast, practical, pragmatic in comparison to teachers
 They develop their theories, ideas, methods just like
teachers to complete the task.
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

11. Web 2.0 techniques in classroom for Gen Z
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 Activities in the virtual classroom – (at college level)
Students can be advised by teacher to do home assignments by
taking up exercises available on net for computer-based Tests
such as TOEFL, TESOL, EFL etc.
Net/video conferencing –students interacting with each other
or in whole one group participating in discussion
 Smart classroom- connected to the sets – for audio-
visual learning
 Engage students on their own – develops the sense of
enchantedness
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

12. A Kitchen in the Corner of the House
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A short piece of fictional narrative by Ambai is given
below:
„The basin in the Kitchen is extremely small. And the drainage is
poor. If the servant woman washes the vessels there, the
whole Kitchen gets flooded. And Papaji, if you hang the
clothes outside the window, the mountain is hidden.’
And he looked at Kishan. And that skilled architect agreed
with his wife.
‘What she says is right, Papaji. Why don’t we do it?’
‘And when did you go near the Kitchen?
‘When she cooked up that Mysore-style meal, it was he who
sliced the onions and chillies for her,’ said Jiji.‟
(Butalia, Urvashi, “Inner Line” 2006, p.66)
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

13. Productive & receptive skills in teaching literary text
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An ELT exercise is developed from a fictional narrative to stimulate
language exchange among the natives
 The selection of key words – cooking and kitchen
 The metaphorical importance – basin, window and mountain
 The particular province food
 The primary debatable words
 The labelling of parts of speech in the text
 The drawing of chart & poster as per the landscape in the fiction
 The comparative drawing of Indian and Western Kitchen settings
 The role of woman and man in society depicted through visuals in the
chart
 Showing the recipe of Mysore-style food or different Indian provinces
 Conversing dialogues through role-playing
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

14. Non-Conventional Pattern in ELT
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 Catching through the
visuals the answers or
comprehension of the
passage
 Framing project-based
learning through
pictures and peer
group activities.
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

15. ELT sensitising tradition
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Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

16. Learning comprehension skills in ELT (non-
conventional pattern)
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 To draw the picture of the kitchen and the landscape
view that is visible from the kitchen
 To write an SMS or an email message to Papaji of the
text complaining about the structure of kitchen
 To edit the email or SMS
 To use the same passage to sensitise the issue by
searching the different themes related to the passage
– for example:- deprivation of women, role of women in the
household, Indian cuisine and Indian Kitchen, The Author‟s agony for
marginalisation of women etc.
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

17. Behavioural Learning Styles
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 The role of teacher in teaching L2
 meaningful activities
 Interactive, stimulative pedagogy
 Conscious of homogeneous national community
 Conditional relevance
 Incidental learning – supplementary learning exercises
 Deliberate learning – conscious effort to analyse or compare
 The role of students in learning L2
 Associate themselves with the context
 Understand the vocabulary of native speakers
 Move from local cultural level to communicative level
 Know how to develop conditional relevance of the words in the text
 Integration of collaborative learning with communication skills
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

18. Web- technology Integrating Intercultural
Communication
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 How to develop text messaging is the main function
of this computer-based video?
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

19. Practice Exercise for Gen Z - (at middle & secondary
level)
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 STEP – I: One can be given these visuals to frame short questions on
any of the pictures given below
 Second group can be given the task to write words on the given visual.
 Third visual can be used to write captions or poetic lines to describe the
poster. Or it can describe the human and non-human objects in the
picture. Or the exercise of match words can be framed.
 Fourth group may be asked to write sentences of fill in the blanks on
the uses of water in life.
 The fifth group of students can be asked to write the benefits of rain
harvesting
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

20. Developing multidisciplinary L2 facets and registers
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 STEP – II: The leader of each group for example the first
one will put questions to the second group.
 The second group will ask the third group to tell
meaning of the words or opposites of the words that have
written on a particular visual.
 The third group will indeed loudly read the written
captions, but the other groups can intervene with their
own captions on the posters.
 The fourth group will read loudly the sentences of fill in
the blanks written on the uses of water, so that other
group of students can participate with curiosity and can
recall their previous knowledge to relate with the visual
to fill in the blanks.
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012

21. Conclusion
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 Thus social conscience and social responsibility is
instilled through computer supported collaborative
learning, while the teacher realises the need of
computer literacy along with language
proficiency, preferences and new perceptions.
 THANK YOU.
Dr. Jayshree Singh 11/11/2012