How to promote the pragmatic awareness and avoid the fossilization phenomenon through a role play activity in English as a foreign language classes

Received on: 07/09/2021. Approved on: 08/11/2021. Published on: 22/12/2021. Abstract: Many people, even after spending a lifetime studying a foreign language are prone to get stuck in a certain grammatical domain no matter the efforts made and the amount of the target language input offered in the classroom. Unfortunately, the great majority who pursuits their dreams to be the closest possible to a native-like speaker, the lack of ability to analyze and synthesize linguistic elements makes them persist in the same errors, establishing a phenomenon known as Fossilization in their learning process. In fact, Fossilization can occur in all learning process levels: phonological, grammatical, lexical and pragmatic and the errors made seem to be similar from individual to individual. In an attempt to avoid this Fossilization process concerning the pragmatically ability to communicate, this article aims to present a suggestion of a role-play activity involving strategies to enhance pragmatic awareness related to politeness theory.


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unfortunately many of these learners, usually adults, will never manage to overcome those obstacles and reach the level of competence they intend to -an aspiration apparently reserved for children who seem to acquire the target language at very early age, some even achieving a nativelike proficiency straightforwardly. Unfortunately, for the great majority who keeps pursuing their dreams to be quite fluent in L2, the lack of ability to analyze and synthesize linguistic elements makes them persist in the same errors, establishing a phenomenon known as Fossilization in their learning process.

Many researchers have already written about
Fossilization after Selinker (1972) had first proposed its concept. The author defends the term as being a fundamental contribution of second language acquisition (SLA) and defines it as the cessation of grammatical development in SLA. According to Han (2009), studies related to Fossilization show that the phenomenon is displayed selectively, i.e., one can get stuck in a certain grammatical domain no matter the efforts done and the amount of the target language input to master its skills and, at the same time, continue to acquire other complex structures of English. For the researcher (2013, p. 133), Fossilization is "a founding concept in second language acquisition (SLA) research". Tarone (1994) says that fossilization represents the last outcome of the L2 learning. Nakuma (1998, p. 247) sees Fossilization as a "term used generally to denote what appears to be a state of permanent failure on the part of an L2 learner to acquire a given feature of the target language." It is noteworthy that Fossilization can occur in all learning process levels: phonological, grammatical, lexical and pragmatic and, according to most teachers´ point of view, the errors seem to be similar from individual to individual.
In terms of Phonological fossilization, Brazilian students tend to face some difficulties in recognizing the [θ ] and [ð] sounds in English simply because they do not exist in their native tongue.
Therefore, instead of pronouncing the word thank as [θ aeŋk], they usually produce [taeŋk] or [saeŋk], affected by their L1 phonological alphabetic Morphological fossilization can be observed in cases where errors are repeatedly made, for instance, when Brazilian pupils forget to add the final -s in the third person singular verbs in the simple present tense form, and say sentences such as He usually wake up at 7 o´clock. Some difficulties can be seen in the appropriate use of the plural forms as well. In Portuguese language grammatical rules, adjectives must agree with the nouns they are referred to so if the noun is in the plural form, the adjective also has to be in the plural. The same happens to gender; if the noun is masculine, the adjective attached to it must be in the masculine, too. The same does not occur in the English language, in which adjectives are invariable; they are not assigned to noun´s number and gender. These rules transfers lead some Brazilian L2 learners to produce sentences like The girls are beautifuls. Plurals of nouns also seem to be a challenge since in L1 most of the words end in -s: mulheres, pessoas, crianças, differently from the English target language, when very common words -women, people, children -need to be dealt in quite early ages of the learning process.
One of the main struggles against Syntactic fossilization refers to the differences in use of the Simple Past and Present Perfect forms. Whereas the former structure is familiar to our mother tongue because of its similarity to the L1 structure, the same does not happen to the latter, and since The aim of this work is to present some suggestions of activities to be done in the EFL classes as an attempt to elicit in the students the pragmatic awareness, avoid the pragmatic failures and the consequent pragmatic fossilization. Since pragmatics embraces the study of meaning in the interactional context, it is common to hear curious and funny stories of misunderstandings from speakers of a foreign language.
An example of these interesting testimonies we get in touch with while searching for theories is the one reported by Schmidt (Schmidt & Frota, 1986). He once pointed out that he used to face some difficulties in ending telephone conversations during his experience as a learner of Portuguese in Brazil. Although he knew that tchau (bye, in Portuguese) would be the perfect move for both parties, he could never manage the exact moment to say that, so he kept waiting for the person on the other line to be the first one to end up the call. As time went by, though, he observed that in many cases people used então tá (something similar to so then) as a signal for the conversation to end. And then he also started using it as a sort of "preclosing formula" which, he says, worked successfully. Later, he started asking native speakers how they did to close telephone conversations and they did not know exactly, but when he asked if então tá could work, they realized that yes, it was really the right way to do that. In fact, they were not able to explain why that choice was the most suitable; they only "felt" it was the right one to be picked up. And this is how things work in each culture. Even in our native environment, we are not aware of our pragmatic competences. From very early age, we are simply taught to say thank you and greet people as a sign of respect and good manners and so is burping in public in China, where -differently from western culture -the act is considered an indicator to the host that the meal has been appreciated. When we are inside and absorbed by our cultural habits, it is sometimes complex -especially if we are not a linguistics expert -to distance ourselves from what everybody around does and start questioning the reasons of our acts. The outsider is the one who questions! Literature reports on several studies concerning pragmatic competence. (Schmidt, 1983(Schmidt, , 1984Kasper, 1997;Do'rnyei, 1997;Bardovi-Harling, 1999 (apud Kasper, 2001) have demonstrated that the
Even advanced learners who have such a high proficiency in grammar may misunderstand certain pragmatic intentions such as the ones related to politeness values, for example. Thus, the consequences of committing pragmatic failures might be potentially worse than making any -sometimes unnoticeable -grammatical error. This is due to the fact that pragmatic faults usually involve misunderstandings, like the false impression of a person sounding rude to somebody, for example.
On the other hand, the improvement in one´s speaking skills seems to be more perceptible when pragmatic awareness has finally taken place. And now here comes another story.
Richard Schmidt (1983Schmidt ( , 1984 describes the case of Wes, a Japanese learner of English whose communicative competence level made up for his low performance of grammar proficiency. Schmidt reports the episode once happened in a movie theater when Wes asked him if he was feeling comfortable on his seat. As a native speaker of English, Schmidt did not realize at first that the student´s question was, in fact, an indirect signal of his intention to change places with him. Indeed, Schmidt did not perceive that a non-native with a relatively low level of English proficiency would be able to succeed pragmatically.

What might politeness encompass?
Alongside the studies in the field of pragmatics, some definitions have been offered by theorists to politeness and impoliteness, most of them concerning the scientific abstracted bias of the terms. According to Lakoff (1975, p. 64), "politeness is developed by societies in order to reduce friction in personal interaction"; Brown and Levinson (1978, p. 13) say that "politeness is a complex system for softening face threats"; Ide (1989, p. 22) affirms that politeness "is language associated with smooth communication". Arndt and Janney (1985, p. 282) conceptualize politeness as "interpersonal supportiveness". Terkourafi He illustrates the situation in which someone has been invited to a British dinner. In that particular context, he affirms, politeness is expected to be expressed in three ways: saying thank you when having something passed -the salt, for example -, praising the cook on the food served, and categorically not burping. By the way, thank you has been one of the first expressions taught to a child in every British family. But when the infant grows up, things become more and more complex in the pragmatic world and praising the cook on the food may turn into such a tricky adventure.
According to the author, if the cook simply accepts the compliment, he/she may sound snob. On the contrary -if he/she doesn´t accept it -the person who praised might be offended. In the attempt to find a balance between these two positions, Culpeper (2011) suggests a response like it´s kind of you. In this way, the compliment then becomes partly due to the value of the food and partly directed to the kindness of the person who praised the cook. Culpeper (2011) adds that, Patrícia Flasmo de Oliveira How to promote the pragmatic awareness and avoid the fossilization phenomenon

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in regard of the cultural aspect of politeness, it is worth saying that in some cultures, like on the Indian subcontinent, burping at the dinner table may not sound rude, but at most, in our common sense, eccentric. Contrary to western popular custom, a sonorous burp can simply express a welcome sign of food appreciation.
Nowadays it is impossible to talk about politeness without mentioning Brown and Levinson´s theory which will be briefly explored in the next section. Brown and Levinson (1987) classified the strategies used to avoid or, at least, to soften the face threatening acts into different categories, which will be discussed below.

Acts (FTA)
We are used to committing FTAs several times in our day-to-day interaction and creating situations that threaten the recipient´s face. In fact, it is impossible to establish a conversation without threatening one´s face or being face threatened. Therefore, all we need is to make use of strategies that show our conversational partner that we consider his/her point of view and we will do our best not to ruin the self-image this person claims for him/herself while we present our opposite ideas. In simple words, we have to secure our partner that we respect his arguments despite ours.

Bald on the record without redress
In a way to respond baldly on record to the question Would you like to stay longer in the space station? astronaut 2 may say something like: Don´t be ridiculous! All I want now is to go back home! By doing that, he will be clear and direct enough, not caring about preserving astronaut 1´s face. This choice would obviously be quite inappropriate considering the hierarchical difference between them.

Bald on the record with the redress
The term "on the record with redress" still encompasses the directiveness of the act, as in "bald on the record", but now some approaches are followed by the conversational participants to minimize the social gap between them in the attempt to avoid face threats. Using in-group identity markers, finding common ground, giving or asking reasons, and assuming or asserting reciprocity are some ways suggested by Brown and Levinson (1978) to guarantee face worth.
Sentences such as I´m sorry, I would love to stay longer at the space station but I miss my family so much! or I would rather give this opportunity to someone else function perfectly well as positive politeness strategies for the situation given. In an informal circumstance, an utterance such as: Well, Patrícia Flasmo de Oliveira How to promote the pragmatic awareness and avoid the fossilization phenomenon 7/11 I love the place, but I love my family more! would be possible as well, but it is not suitable here.
Positive politeness is redress to the addressee´s positive face, his perennial desire that his wants (or the actions/ acquisitions/ values resulting from them) should be thought of as desirable. Redress consists in partially satisfying that desire by communicating that one´s own wants (or some of them) are in some respects similar to the addressee´s wants. (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 101) However, there are moments in which,

Off-record
Another way described by Brown and Levinson (1078) to soften face threatening acts is to perform the FTAs "off record". In general, off-record politeness can be expressed in basically two main ways. In the first case, the speakers can invite conversational implicatures, strategies such as giving hints, clues of association, presupposition; using tautologies or contradictions, metaphors, rhetorical questions. In the second case, acting vaguely or ambiguously may be a good strategy for the speaker, who may also over-generalize and be incomplete, using ellipsis, for instance. We have seen that communication is permeated by rules and each culture has its own set of do's and don´ts. FTAs are inevitable in any discursive practices and it only takes an instant for a person to decide which strategies to use -mostly being chosen subconsciously. Based on that, many of 8/11 Porto Alegre, v. 12, n. 1, p. 1-11, jan.-dez. 2021 | e-41723 us wonder if pragmatic competence in L2 can be taught? Is a teacher able to prepare his/ her students to deal with all sorts of situations, for instance? What activities should be used in class to enable pragmatic competence and consequently avoid fossilization? These issues will be discussed below.

Can pragmatic competence be taught?
Focusing our attention on the EFL classes again, we observe the continuing grammatical improvement during a lifelong learning of a foreign language; the period that enables the achievement of the ability to recognize lexical, syntactical, morphological and phonological features of a language, as well as the effective use of all these features to interpret, encode and decode words and sentences. Nevertheless, the same progress cannot be clearly detected in terms of pragmatic competence even though our L1 repertoire of pragmatic routines keeps growing throughout our lives. Why does the same not happen regarding the target language we are learning?
It is necessary to take into account the difficulties that some EFL face while stimulating their students to speak the target language since this group itself is also inserted in the group of people who must be aware of the social use of the L2.
Limberg (2015)  But what could EFL teachers do to make students improve their conversational competence in the classroom? As Kasper (1997) observes, communicative actions go beyond speech acts such as greeting or requesting. They encompasse participation in conversation, engaging in different types of discourse and dealing with interaction in quite complex speech events as well. The author believes that, as soon as learners begin to master linguistic knowledge of the target language, their abilities to transfer the set form-function from L1 to L2 -even with some adjustments in social categorization, when necessary -will lead to the acquisition of specific pragmalinguistic understanding. But in general things do not seem to be so simple, she affirms, since learners frequently do not make use of what she calls "free ride", or rather, they do not use the just-acquired available knowledge and/or strategies to new tasks. Instead, they opt for the literal interpretation of L2 based on their knowledge of L1. Unfortunately, learners take utterances at face value rather than inferring their meanings through context interpretation and consequently, end up underusing politeness markings in the target language. Kasper (1981) points out that, though adult learners possess a great amount of pragmatic information, they do not always know how to use it properly. That´s when pedagogic intervention must take place.
The author emphasizes the need to make students Patrícia Flasmo de Oliveira How to promote the pragmatic awareness and avoid the fossilization phenomenon

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aware of what they already know from the target language and encourage them to put their familiar pragmatic knowledge -whose nature is universal and transferable -in contact with L2 contexts.
Having taught EFL for over 30 years, I believe that pragmatic awareness can undoubtly be implemented in the classroom. Although this might not be the way chosen by many educators who prefer to teach grammar since it is easier to deal with rules and ready-made formulas than having to help students cope with something so broad and adventurous as pragmalinguistic The activity is designed for students whose age gap varies from 11 to 13 years old and the steps will be described as follows.

Activity: life on international space station
After exploring the text Life on International Space Station, students are asked to do a different activity for a change and, for that, they will have to gather in groups of three.
(1) Each group is oriented to role play a dialog in which each member acts according to the instructions given individually, as follows: Instruction 1: You are an American astronaut who has been staying in the international space station for almost 6 months. You know you might not have another opportunity like this one and want to make the most of your stay there. You have been asked to be interviewed by a wellknown TV channel. During the conversation, talk about your experience, give your own impressions about the station and the reasons why you would 10/11 Porto Alegre, v. 12, n. 1, p. 1-11, jan.-dez. 2021 | e-41723 like to stay longer. (2) They are given about 15 minutes to prepare the dialog. Ellis (2005) considers planning for challenging tasks as an essential opportunity for students to improve their performance. I see this moment as an important way to organize thoughts and put into practice contents learned in the previous activities, like the one about the "word friends".
(3) They are told about the possibility to take notes while planning but are warned not to use these notes during their performance, otherwise the dialog may turn into a reading activity and this is not the purpose here.
(4) After creating the dialog, each group has its rehearsal time. This is the most important moment of their project, since the teacher can monitor the students´ performances, reminding them to pay attention at the most appropriate way -formal/ informal -by which they might address each other. How will politeness take place along the interaction, considering that their teacher is used to giving them cultural background when introducing a new topic, highlighting the pros and cons of language use?
(5) The students finally perform their dialogs to the teacher and their classmates. By this time, the earlier repetition of structures is expected to give them enough confidence and help reduce anxiety.

Conclusion
Using language inappropriately may have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, students should be given the opportunity to acknowledge sociocultural aspects of the language they are learning in order to develop their communicative competences so that misunderstanding, embarrassment, and insults could be easily avoided with a minimum of awareness of the sociocultural norms of the L2. Through a brief literature review of politeness strategies to control the effects of FTA, this article has proposed a role-play activity that brings to the classroom the opportunity to get in touch with contextualized language and to experience close to real-life situations. During their dialog preparation with the teacher as a monitor, students may get so naturally engaged in the task that will not realize they are using the target language efficiently, reducing pragmatic failures and pragmalinguistic fossilization.