The article I read for the most recent summary was Grammatical Versus “Pragmatic Error: Employer Perceptions of Nonnative and Native English Speakers” by Joanna Wolfe, Nisha Shanmugaraj, and Jaclyn Sipe. I found it interesting when Amanda discussed it with my group in a break out room. I wanted to know more about the topic and read it for myself.

I do want to recap it before I go into some of my thoughts on how this can be applied to teaching. As a I mentioned in my summary: this article analyzes the way that people in the business world perceive grammatical errors made by non English speakers in emails. Writing instructors place a lot of emphasis on correct grammar, syntax, and punctuation in academic writing. Yet there are different levels to this and teachers make allowances for NNES (Non-native English Speakers). To conduct the study they sent out a series of emails with different mistakes in them to gauge the impact the errors had on their recipients. The study concluded that business professionals do make allowances for these errors and are not as frustrated by them the way they might be with native English speakers.

This article also found that social and cultural errors such as errors in tone actually have a worse impact. They can create misunderstandings and negative situations in a professional setting more than grammatical errors. This article argues that there should be an emphasis on mitigating pragmatic errors. NNES writers created emails with too casual a tone or were too blunt without softening their requests or statements. While grammar is still important in a business setting these errors in tone and politeness were judged more harshly and seen as evidence of character flaws. There are some limitations to this study since the participants may have assumed that the sender of the email was an NNES from their name. It isn’t clear if participants would be as lenient with NNES from other nationalities and races. The article also puts forth the idea that in teaching writing pragmatic concerns are even more important than grammatical ones. 

I found this interesting because I definitely do tend to be more forgiving of errors in students who I know English is their second language. I also do tend to get frustrated when emails and other communication feel rude or have other pragmatic errors in tone.  I think this can be a problem for more than just ESL students. I have had students who are native English speakers not be conscious of their tone or the way they are communicating. I also wanted to think about this more in relation to the way my students communicate in email and the way some of my students engage in communicating to their audiences in Unit 2.

Most of my students did an excellent job on Unit 2 this semester but I did run into some students who really missed the mark on tone. Some of them were too direct or not apologetic enough when responding to their different audiences when it came to this scandal. For example instead of softening their tone one student when responding to one of the customer social media I had a student say “We just made one mistake and are working to correct it don’t hold it against us we are doing better. ” To me this felt almost combinative and not apologetic and could have been fixed with a more apologetic tone. On the other hand a lot of my students seemed to really grasp this and do well responding.

Shanmugaraj, and Jaclyn Sipe state “Requesting information is a crucial and notoriously difficult speech act to execute successfully. While directness and clarity are essential for the recipient to understand what is being requested, the illocutionary force (Searle, 1969) must be tempered with downgraders and modifiers, such as query preparatory acts (e.g., “Is there any way you could . . . ?”) for the request to be pragmatically successful.”  I think this is a good point and I feel like it might be helpful to have a lesson on some of these situations and ways that students can soften their done especially when they are asking someone else to do something for them. 

We do have lessons in tone in Unit 2 where students are asked to take a quiz and soften the tone of text they are given. I am wondering if there are more lessons we could incorporate into this Unit to help them understand tone in a business setting.  I think maybe planning another activity to help them see how it can be frustrating to have blunt and demanding.

I also think based on this article that we should be looking for ways to help students with pragmatic errors rather than grammar. If I see errors I will point them out to students but they aren’t always my main focus. I want to try to focus more on pragmatic errors as well and help students understand the importance of the way you communicate in a business setting and how that translates within the classroom.

I found this article and was thinking it might be helpful to share with students and it can be applied to school emails and business emails.

https://www.businessinsider.com/common-email-mistakes-professionals-make-2014-7

~Rachel