Pragmatic Awareness and Engagement with Language from a Multilingual Perspective

Abstract

The current study focuses on multilingual learners’ engagement with languages and the collaborative construction of their pragmatic awareness. The construct of Engagement with Language (Svalberg, 2009, 2012) was implemented as the framework for the measurement of learners’ engagement and the analysis of peer-interaction. Seventy-six first-year university students took part in the composition of an email eliciting requests in Spanish, Catalan and English. Participants worked in dyads and their interaction was audio-recorded for the later transcription and identification of pragmatic-related episodes in selected cases. A post-task questionnaire targeted the perceptions of learners’ engagement with the languages during task completion. Findings showed the positive effects of the collaborative writing task over learners’ cognitive, affective and social engagement as well as the mediation between these dimensions. Furthermore, learners’ engagement with the languages, particularly with English, when addressing pragmatic-related issues evidenced the advantage of their multilingual experience for the development of their pragmatic awareness.