Apologies

The present paper focuses on teaching the speech act of apologising based on previous research findings on the use, acquisition, and teaching of this particular speech act. The paper provides practical suggestions as to how pragmatic awareness can be raised by first presenting apology strategies and then showing how learners can be engaged in analysing their own performance, and comparing it with that of speakers of the target language. Suggestions will also be made about ways of providing learners with authentic input, a variety of pragmatic options and with ample opportunity to practice in various apology situations. Such training will allow learners to develop their own interlanguage through optimal convergence to target language norms rather than total convergence (Kasper, 1997).