CARLA Descriptions of Speech Acts—apologies, complaints, compliments, greetings, invitations, refusals, requests, thanks; with teaching tips and sample exercises.
CARLA Pragmatics and Speech Acts Bibliography—searchable by speech act: e.g., apologies, complaints, compliments, or requests.
CARLA Japanese Speech Acts—Developed by Noriko Ishihara and Andrew D. Cohen through the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), this award-winning website is a comprehensive, research-based collection of self-access instructional modules designed to develop learners' pragmatic competence in Japanese. It was created primarily for intermediate- to advanced-level learners and was later used as the basis for CARLA's parallel Spanish pragmatics project.
Key features
- Unlike many speech-act resources, the site integrates research, instruction, learner strategy training, authentic scenarios, and assessment, making it valuable not only for language learners but also for researchers and curriculum developers.
- An introductory Speech Acts Awareness module built around realistic communicative situations.
- Five complete instructional modules: Apologies, Compliments and Responses to Compliments, Refusals, Requests, Thanks.
- Interactive exercises, Authentic Japanese scenarios, Strategy-training activities, Reflection questions, Teacher guides, Research documentation, Annotated bibliographies for each speech act, Explanations of Japanese sociocultural norms and pragmatic conventions.
Why the Japanese Speech Acts Website is valuable for L2 pragmatics
- This resource is unusual because it combines theory, empirical research, pedagogy, and learner strategy instruction within a single website. Rather than simply teaching linguistic forms, it helps learners notice and interpret the social and cultural factors that determine appropriate language use.
- The modules emphasize: relationships between language and culture, sociopragmatic norms, pragmalinguistic choices, honorific language (keigo), politeness strategies, indirectness, face-saving strategies, learner noticing, metapragmatic awareness, and self-reflection.
- Learners are encouraged to compare Japanese pragmatic conventions with those of their first language, helping them recognize potential sources of pragmatic transfer and cross-cultural misunderstanding.
Dancing with Words: Strategies for Learning Pragmatics in Spanish—A comprehensive, research-based, self-access instructional website developed by Julie Sykes and Andrew Cohen through the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA). Created as part of a research project on learner strategy training in pragmatics, it was designed to help learners develop the ability to communicate appropriately in a wide variety of Spanish-speaking contexts. The website emphasizes pragmatic ability—knowing not only what to say, but how, when, and to whom to say it. The website demonstrates how findings from interlanguage pragmatics research can be translated into effective pedagogical materials. Every instructional module is grounded in empirical studies rather than intuition, making it an excellent model for researchers developing instructional interventions or technology-enhanced learning materials.
The site is organized around an Introduction to Pragmatics, eight instructional modules focusing on major speech acts and interactional situations, and a reference module on pragmatic performance. It builds on the earlier CARLA project for Japanese pragmatics and adopts a strategy-based approach, rather than prescribing a single "native-speaker" norm.
Key features
- Comprehensive instructional modules—The website includes an introductory unit followed by modules on compliment sequences, gratitude and leave taking, requests, apologies, invitation sequences, service encounters, advice, suggestions, disagreements, complaints, and reprimands, as well as a module on considerations for pragmatic performance.
- Strategy-based instruction—Unlike traditional language-learning materials that emphasize memorizing formulas, the site teaches learners strategies for interpreting and performing speech acts across diverse communicative situations. It addresses both:
- sociopragmatic strategies—understanding social norms, relationships, power, distance, and context, and
- (Sociopragmatics is the study of the social and cultural rules that determine appropriate language use in context. Sociopragmatic failure occurs, for example, when learners believe that speaking directly to a professor is socially acceptable because that is normal in their own culture.)
- pragmalinguistic strategies—choosing appropriate linguistic forms to express those meanings.
- (Pragmalinguistics is the study of the linguistic forms and strategies available for performing communicative acts and conveying pragmatic meanings. Pragmalinguistic failure occurs when learners are, for example, too direct in a request situation where an indirect request is expected.)
- Authentic interactional models—The modules feature video and audio recordings of unscripted role plays performed by native speakers from different varieties of Spanish. Rather than memorized scripts, participants received only the communicative situation, producing interactions that more closely resemble authentic conversation. Written transcripts accompany the recordings for detailed analysis. The video examples provide valuable data for analyzing requests, apologies, compliments, refusals, invitations, service encounters, disagreements, complaints, leave-taking, and conversational routines (conventionalized, formulaic expressions and sequences of interaction that speakers use in recurring social situations, e.g., greetings, leave-taking, thanking, and service encounters).
- Interactive learning activities—Each module includes the following: guided observation tasks, interactive exercises, reflection questions, strategy-training activities, explanations of pragmatic features, summaries of key learning points, and opportunities for self-assessment and self-correction.
- Attention to language variation—The website emphasizes that there is no single correct way to perform a speech act in Spanish. Learners explore regional, social, and contextual variation and learn to adapt their language to different Spanish-speaking communities rather than applying rigid rules.
- Support for multiple audiences—Separate sections provide guidance for student learners, classroom teachers, and researchers. The teacher materials explain how to integrate the modules into instruction, while the researcher section describes the theoretical principles, empirical foundations, and research supporting the website's design.
- Rich examples of speech-act realization—Researchers can examine how pragmatic choices vary according to social distance, relative status, degree of imposition, communicative goals, and regional variation.
- Focus on learner strategies—One of the website's most distinctive contributions is its emphasis on learner strategy instruction. Rather than teaching fixed expressions, it helps learners develop metapragmatic awareness and flexible decision-making strategies that can transfer to new communicative situations. This makes the site particularly valuable for research on pragmatic awareness, noticing, self-regulation, and strategy instruction.
Why the Spanish Dancing with Words website is valuable for L2 pragmatics
- A bridge between research and practice—It integrates theory, empirical research, authentic interaction, strategy instruction, and classroom pedagogy within a single freely accessible resource. As such, it serves not only as an instructional site for teachers and as a learning environment for students, but also as a model for researchers interested in designing, implementing, and evaluating instructional approaches to L2 pragmatics.
- Support for classroom-based research—The website is well suited for studies examining the following: explicit vs. implicit instruction in L2 pragmatics, development of pragmatic ability, speech-act acquisition, instructional pragmatics, computer-assisted language learning (CALL), the development of intercultural communicative ability, learner strategy use, pragmatic awareness, and assessment of L2 pragmatic ability.
