Literature in language teaching mainly discusses learners' transfer of speech act expressions from their mother tongue to English without suggesting many ways to raise learners' awareness of producing English speech acts appropriately. The most common solution is the “prescribed” strategies presented in interlanguage studies. On the premise that language classroom inputs can be enhanced with complementary metalanguage instruction, this chapter proposes Minimal English pedagogical scripts developed based on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory for Vietnamese learners of English. The chapter covers the NSM basic concepts, including the newly introduced Minimal English, explains NSM component phrases in scripts, and illustrates cultural and cognitive differences between English native speakers and Vietnamese learners in performing two speech acts, namely request and compliment response. Pedagogical scripts for making requests and compliment responses in English are recommended, accordingly. The chapter also suggests pedagogical script templates for other English speech acts.
Top1. Introduction
For the past few decades, English has become the most preferred foreign language at all levels of education in Vietnam. The importance of English is highlighted in the National Foreign Languages Project, which proposes that English be taught from the very first years in primary schools nationwide. Along with this ambitious language policy, changes have been made to English Language Teaching (ELT) in Vietnam, with an orientation towards the language users’ skills and competence that meet international standards. The Vietnamese six-level framework for English proficiency, with descriptors not only about grammatical and communicative competence but also about cultural competence in language use, is evident of this reform. However, the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as a Western-based pedagogical practice has not always been easy for non-Western teachers (Ellis, 1996) and the CLT practice presents certain challenges to language teachers in Vietnam regarding their culture, language environment, and students’ attitude towards language learning (Pham, 2007). The preferred CLT classroom activities such as pair/group work and role plays, albeit useful for teachers to stimulate learners’ involvement in language practice, are necessarily artificial, let alone a contradiction to educational traditions and expectations in some cultures. VanPatten (1990) argued that such activities alone could not help learners to reach a high level of proficiency because what is artificial is hard to be acquired and put into practice. For these reasons, it is timely for ELT teachers to consider complementary tools of classroom instruction which can be suitable to the teaching and learning traditions and helpful in raising learners’ awareness of cultural appropriateness.
The purpose of ELT, as argued by researchers in language education (e.g., Renou, 2001, VanPatten, 1990), is to prepare learners for intercultural communication rather than solely speaking the target language within the classroom. A language classroom is considered as a simulation where the target language is introduced and practiced, but it should also be where awareness of cultural differences is raised through instruction. Therefore, it is essential to have a consistent metalanguage used as instruction, or at least as supplementary instruction, to describe and explain, if possible, the target language use. Renou (2001) argued that metalanguage and second language (L2) acquisition have had a supportive relationship to the extent that the metalanguage stimulates increases in proficiency. However, there has been a paucity in L2 research that proposes a particular metalanguage framework for classroom instruction purposes. For this reason, the present chapter proposes the pedagogical script as a supplementary tool to teach EFL learners how to perform speech acts in English. These pedagogical scripts are developed based on the Minimal English, a newly introduced set of vocabulary in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory. Although it specially focuses on requests and compliment responses, it provides usable templates for developing other speech acts as well.