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Each week of this month’s Teacher’s Corner has required students to reflect and think critically in order to deepen their understanding of culture and how it can affect interactions. This week, students will apply their experience and knowledge to figure out how to make intercultural interactions successful, even if they are challenging.

So far this month in the Teacher’s Corner, students have had a chance to adopt characteristics of a fictional culture group, plan and perform skits, and observe and describe culture groups other than those they were assigned. Through critical thinking, reflection, and discussion, these activities have helped students recognize that culture includes more than just food, clothing, and celebrations.

This week’s Teacher’s Corner encourages students to think critically about the unspoken rules and expectations of different cultures.

Teaching vocabulary and common phrases is an essential task of the English language classroom, but it is also important to teach the pragmatics of a language to help learners use language appropriately in different situations. This month’s Teacher’s Corner explores the idea of pragmatics and why it is a valuable component to include in instruction. The article also contains resources and ideas for including pragmatics instruction and building up students’ pragmatic competence.