Assertive Refusal at School: A Teaching Proposal Inspired by Applied Communication Studies

Abstract

The article is part of the current reflection on the mother tongue teaching.
It enriches this reflection by proposing a lesson project devoted to teaching the skill of formulating assertive refusal. First, the author presents a classification of communication types, and defines practiced communication technique. Then he describes the students’ activities during the lesson. In the course of it, they are to analyze the pattern, identify the obligatory elements of an assertive refusal, transform submissive refusals into assertive ones, add the missing elements in the given assertive refusals, and write their own communications of this type. In the end, the author concludes that the ability to formulate practiced speech act can be taught by traditional methods of language training.