The presenters consider the adaptation and reinterpretation of reader comments, to make them digestible and viable for authors to implement. The presenter outlines pragmatic competencies necessary for learners in a postsecondary academic setting. Video clips show the differing performance of students who received pragmatic skills instruction and those who did not. Handouts include a bibliography and activities to develop pragmatic competence. This training demonstration addresses the challenges faced by ITAs in understanding and responding to student-generated questions.
Undergraduates frequently ask questions in a nontraditional format contrary to what ITAs expect.
The presenters demonstrate strategies for training ITAs to cope with questions that if unrecognized or left unanswered will create instructional problems. The presenter discusses the comparative research on backchannel behavior of 10 Japanese women in a intra- and interlanguage context. Findings indicate that backchannel behavior transfers across languages and cultures. The researcher discusses theoretical and pedagogical implications of interlanguage studies addressing language teaching for responsive listeners. Despite the importance of hedges to express uncertainty and to diminish directness in English, research on their use has been limited, and ESL texts generally do not explicitly cover hedging.