International Journal of Language & Linguistics

How Should Pragmatics be taught at Vocational College?
I Made Rai Jaya Widanta, Made Budiarsa, Wayan Simpen, Made Netra

Abstract
Despite some investigations on how pragmatics is to be taught in English classes, there has not been an acceptable solution offered to the teaching of pragmatics in higher education institution like vocational college. This qualitative research was aimed at finding how pragmatics is taught at vocational college. A group of 23 (twenty three) students majoring in tourism were chosen purposively. The research participants were given treatment of pragmatic-based English teaching. Test 1 (T1) was carried out in prior to the treatment and Test 2 (T2) was given upon the treatment. On the test, oral role play cards consisting of scenarios for the research participants to produce request and refusal utterances were used as testing device. The teaching of pragmatics in class was done for ten sessions using some handouts in which aspects of pragmatics were inserted. In the teaching sessions, implicit and explicit approaches were implemented. In addition, the teaching syntax (teaching stages) consisting of three stages was particularly designed for this purpose. Students were also to fill questionnaire to see how they think about the model developed for the pedagogical activity. The T1 and T2 results were explicated, scored, and analyzed using statistical device of paired samples t-test. The statistical result indicated that the approach and teaching stages designed were effective to improve students’ pragmatic competence.

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