Comprehension and Attitudes Towards Pragmatically Functional Language : In-class Surveys

This paper discusses a classroom activity designed to check student comprehension of and attitudes towards function phrases (FPs) taught in an English discussion class.A survey was to examine opinions about the target phrases' pragmatic uses and their perceived ease of use one or two weeks after their initial introduction.The results of the activity may support the initial hypothesis that students are familiar with the pragmatic value of functions before their introduction in the lesson.This enabled class-specific feedback and additional practice based on pragmatic accuracy or misunderstandings prior to discussion tests.There also appeared to be patterns in students' evaluations of usefulness and ease of use.The pragmatic effects or purposes of FPs expressed in student responses indicated either previous learning, success of explicit instruction, some pragmatic universal implicit to L1 and L2, or some combination these factors.