Do ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ always make us sound polite?
with Tatiana Golechkova
February 19, 2023
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Moscow
Antikafe & Coworking CheckPoint
Myasnitskaya street, 17/2 (Chistye Prudy Metro station)
Guest Speaker:
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Moscow
Antikafe & Coworking CheckPoint
Myasnitskaya street, 17/2 (Chistye Prudy Metro station)
Guest Speaker:
Tatiana Golechkova
(Department Coordinator at New Economic School, Moscow, Skolkovo, CELTA, DELTA, PhD in Cognitive Linguistics)
About the Speaker
Tatiana Golechkova
Tatiana Golechkova, Ph.D. in Cognitive Linguistic, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Languages at the New Economic School, a Cambridge Delta qualified EFL teacher and teacher-trainer with broad experience in teaching academic writing and speaking to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as academics.
Her areas of special interest include strategies for effective written and oral communication, genre features of English texts, and learner autonomy. She has presented and run workshops at several national and international conferences, including NATE, IATEFL, BALEAP, IEEE ICE
Her areas of special interest include strategies for effective written and oral communication, genre features of English texts, and learner autonomy. She has presented and run workshops at several national and international conferences, including NATE, IATEFL, BALEAP, IEEE ICE
About the Workshop
Do ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ always make us sound polite?
In class, we mainly associate being polite with using polite English phrases in speech. But what does politeness actually mean? In the first part of the workshop, we will go beyond encouraging students to learn functional expressions and try to explain – relying on an influential politeness theory – why ‘Can I have that paper?’ sounds more polite than ‘Please bring me that paper’.
In the second part of the workshop, we’ll see how this theory applies to emails. Dealing with a problem by email can prove really tricky. How do we decide what to write? How can we phrase those ideas so that we get what we want without making people hate us? In the workshop, we will discuss and practice strategies that can help achieve our goals and keep friendly relations with colleagues.
Part I
When teaching our students to communicate effectively, we usually encourage them to learn some functional language that is meant to make them sound polite. However, learning something without understanding what stands behind it, is often quite difficult. In contrast, awareness of how exactly the phrases make the utterances polite and what effects their misuse can produce usually encourages students to use them more consciously and meaningfully.
In this workshop, we will turn to one of the most influential theories (Face Theory by Brown and Levinson) to see what stands behind being polite and why it is not always enough to add a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’. Tatiana Golechkova will show how familiarising our students with the basics of the theory will help them avoid some communication pitfalls. We will summarise the features of politeness as it is perceived in the English-speaking culture which students from other countries tend to struggle with. This will enable us to deal more effectively with these problems in order to make our students better communicators and prepare them for performing effectively in global business or academia.
Part II
In this part, we will see how the Face Theory is implemented in emailing language. We will look at mistakes communicants can make when attempting to deal with problems and how these can be interpreted by people from different cultures. We will see how unsuccessful choice of words can lead to a very annoyed boss or getting ignored. We will also discuss and practice some specific strategies that contribute to getting what we want and keeping friendly relations with people. It is these simple, but not always obvious techniques that make English emails sound so gentle and polite – something that speakers of other languages might struggle with.
In class, we mainly associate being polite with using polite English phrases in speech. But what does politeness actually mean? In the first part of the workshop, we will go beyond encouraging students to learn functional expressions and try to explain – relying on an influential politeness theory – why ‘Can I have that paper?’ sounds more polite than ‘Please bring me that paper’.
In the second part of the workshop, we’ll see how this theory applies to emails. Dealing with a problem by email can prove really tricky. How do we decide what to write? How can we phrase those ideas so that we get what we want without making people hate us? In the workshop, we will discuss and practice strategies that can help achieve our goals and keep friendly relations with colleagues.
Part I
When teaching our students to communicate effectively, we usually encourage them to learn some functional language that is meant to make them sound polite. However, learning something without understanding what stands behind it, is often quite difficult. In contrast, awareness of how exactly the phrases make the utterances polite and what effects their misuse can produce usually encourages students to use them more consciously and meaningfully.
In this workshop, we will turn to one of the most influential theories (Face Theory by Brown and Levinson) to see what stands behind being polite and why it is not always enough to add a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’. Tatiana Golechkova will show how familiarising our students with the basics of the theory will help them avoid some communication pitfalls. We will summarise the features of politeness as it is perceived in the English-speaking culture which students from other countries tend to struggle with. This will enable us to deal more effectively with these problems in order to make our students better communicators and prepare them for performing effectively in global business or academia.
Part II
In this part, we will see how the Face Theory is implemented in emailing language. We will look at mistakes communicants can make when attempting to deal with problems and how these can be interpreted by people from different cultures. We will see how unsuccessful choice of words can lead to a very annoyed boss or getting ignored. We will also discuss and practice some specific strategies that contribute to getting what we want and keeping friendly relations with people. It is these simple, but not always obvious techniques that make English emails sound so gentle and polite – something that speakers of other languages might struggle with.
