Developing Learners' Pragmatic Competence through Speaking : Case of the Global Virtual Classroom in the Department of English at Tlemcen University

Abstract

English as Foreign Language learners may find difficulties when interacting with other users of the English language (being natives or non natives). The difficulty lies on the fact that the speaker and the listener are said to be of a distinct culture; so, the EFL learners may find difficulties to choose the appropriate language to express his/her intended meaning. Accordingly, the learners of the Global Virtual Class (GVC) at the University of Tlemcen may find the same problem. This issue is highly noticeable among the GVC learners as they depend on the speaking skill as being an important mean of communication. Thus, in this research, the attempt is to develop the learners’ pragmatic competence through the speaking skill. Therefore, this study aims at Figuring out if this class is taking into account the pragmatic aspects of English language and how can a teacher develop students’ pragmatic competence. However, despite the fact the GVC learners are said to be linguistically competent, they find difficulties when interacting with the different users of English language from different cultural backgrounds. For this reason, this research tries to shed the light on this difficulty and intends also to give importance to the pragmatic aspects of the English language.