Developing Cross-Cultural Relational Ability in Foreign Language Learning: Asset-Based Pedagogy to Enhance Pragmatic Competence

This book reconceptualizes successful communication in a foreign language as an enjoyable and uplifting experience, focusing on building confidence, commitment, and cross-cultural relational ability. It draws on qualitative data from Spanish-speaking learners of English to inform a productive pedagogy centered around language users' communicative objectives and interactional successes.

Format: Hardback
Length: 166 pages
Publication date: 23 July 2021
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This volume redefines successful communication in a foreign language as an enjoyable and uplifting experience, moving beyond a focus on grammatical accuracy and fluency to emphasize how foreign language learners can build on their previous achievements and communicative successes in the target language. By drawing on grounded qualitative data collected through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and conversations with Spanish-speaking learners of English, the text illustrates how learners' experiences and insights can be used to inform a productive pedagogy centered around language users' communicative objectives and interactional successes. Chapters highlight bilingual speakers' conscious language use, practices, and choices in the target language, as well as the reasons and implications for such deliberate communicative practices and relational behavior. Through this critical relational pedagogy, Mugford aims to better equip language learners with the confidence and pragmatic resources they need to engage in positive cross-cultural relational work.

As a valuable and student-centered contribution to teaching and learning modern foreign languages, this volume will be of interest to researchers, scholars, and educators in language education, TESOL, World Language teaching, and Applied Linguistics.

Weight: 382g
Dimension: 158 x 237 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367676513