Although pragmatic competence is an essential part of communicative competence in another language, it is hardly ever included in foreign language education, or it is just included as anecdotal information. In this talk, I will propose that Technology-mediated Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) is an excellent option to fully integrate pragmatics in the foreign language classroom. Focusing on pragmatics as part of the language required to accomplish a task can help learners succeed in the interactional practices of that task, and at the same time, help them acquire the necessary digital literacies to establish and maintain social relations; relations that today are largely formed and kept with the help of technologies.

Foto: Privat

Marta González-Lloret is a Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi, Manoa. Her main areas of research are at the intersections of technology and Task-based Language Teaching and technology and L2 pragmatics. She is also interested in Conversation Analysis for L2 interaction, teacher training, and assessment, especially performance-based assessment. Among her recent publications is The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and technology (2022) edited with Nicole Ziegler and the 2020 special Issue of CALICO journal (37,1) on Exploring the Interface of Interlanguage (L2) Pragmatics and Digital Spaces. She is co-editor of the John Benjamins Task-based Language Teaching book series and editor of the NFLRC book series Pragmatics & Language Learning.