A Literature Review on Teaching Pragmatics in the EFL Context: Challenges and Implications

Teaching and learning pragmatic knowledge is important yet challenging since it is less visible. This paper mainly reviews what challenges both teachers and language learners would face from four perspectives when teaching and learning pragmatics, including EFL classroom context, EFL teachers, and teaching materials. This paper would further review the teaching implications of how to deal with these challenges to help learners develop their pragmatic competence. The aim of this paper is to have a complete understanding of improving EFL learners’ pragmatic ability by reviewing pragmatic knowledge, instructional pragmatics, and the challenges of teaching pragmatics within EFL contexts.