Teachers’ Perceptions Toward Pragmatics and Pragmatic Teaching

In the last few decades, pragmatic competence has become one of the issues that captured academic attention in education settings. Yet, teachers’ perceptions of pragmatics and teaching pragmatics has yet to be closely investigated in the context of Moroccan higher education and therefore remains uncharted in literature. To address these gaps, the present study explored how Moroccan university professors view pragmatics and pragmatic teaching. It also explored how they use their pragmatic knowledge in the classroom. A total of 10 university professors (6 males and 4 females) from two public universities (Moulay Ismail and Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah) in Morocco participated in the current study. Quantitative data were collected by completing an anonymous questionnaire, while qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Participants expressed their perceptions and described experiences of the importance of teaching pragmatics, issues related to culture and identity in teaching English as a Foreign Language, and materials and tasks in teaching pragmatics. The findings yielded that linguistic knowledge is as essential as pragmatic knowledge. Thus, striking a balance between pragmatic and grammatical competence and teaching them simultaneously is crucial. Learners with advanced grammatical knowledge may fail to use the target language appropriately. As such, the results indicated that some teachers are unaware of the importance of introducing pragmatics to students in the early stages of learning English. Their skills are enough to be good at transmitting cultural knowledge and suitable language competence to students. Practical implications for future research and practice are also discussed.