Development of students' pragmatic competence when using communicative strategies of politeness in English

Abstract

In modern English teaching, traditional approaches are often limited to grammar and vocabulary, ignoring the pragmatic aspects of politeness, which leads to misunderstandings in intercultural communication and a decrease in students' motivation. This is especially true in multinational educational environments where speech adaptation skills to social norms are needed. The research focuses on the pragmatic analysis of positive and negative politeness strategies according to the theory of P. Brown and S. Levinson, with the aim of developing pedagogical models for the formation of pragmatic competence. The tasks include systematization of tactics (complementarity, indirection), analysis of their implementation in discourses, and recommendations for integration into lessons where students develop ethical communication skills through role-playing and text analysis. The research methods combine discursive, component and contextual analysis of authentic materials from official business, academic, journalistic and colloquial discourses. Interactive tasks were used in the pedagogical experiment (n=150 university students): analyzing examples («You're absolutely brilliant» for positive tactics) and creating dialogues based on formality, with an assessment on a scale of pragmatic effectiveness. The emphasis on pedagogy is realized through integration into blended learning, where students use online platforms to model situations, developing skills of reflection and cultural adaptation. The results revealed the dominance of positive tactics (complementarity with intensifiers) in informal communication and negative ones (hedges, conditional constructions) in formal communication, with correlation of effectiveness from context. In the experiment, students' motivation increased by 28%, and pragmatic competence – by 35%, confirming the benefits for learning. The discussion highlights the pedagogical value: strategies develop communicative competence through the practice of tactics, forming empathy and critical thinking. It is recommended to integrate into courses for multilingual groups, where analysis promotes tolerance and preparation for global communication, opening up prospects for further methods.