Pragmatic Failure in a Courtesy Role-Play

Marcos's sentence is well-formed and would pass a grammar check, which is exactly why it is a good teaching case: the error is social, not structural.

What is missing or misapplied:

1. No attention-getter or address form. With a host mother and a high-imposition request, Spanish expects an opener: “Disculpe, señora,” “Oiga, doña X,” or at minimum a summons. He starts with the request itself.
2. Direct volition (“quiero que me prestes”). Stating my desire that you act foregrounds the speaker's will and presumes on the hearer. It is grammatical and used among intimates, but with a host mother it reads as entitlement.
3. No negative politeness for a high-cost request. Lending a car is a big imposition; it calls for mitigation: conditional (“¿Podrías…?”), imperfect for politeness (“quería pedirle…”), hypotheticals (“¿Sería posible…?”, “¿Te importaría…?”), hedges (“quizá,” “si no es molestia”), or a diminutive (“un ratito”).
4. Justification placed after the request rather than woven around it. “Es que necesito…” is a valid justification, but Spanish often prefers framing or an appeal to the hearer's goodwill before the ask. As placed, it reads as an excuse for a decision already made.
5. Address form unmanaged. He uses tú with no indication the host mother has invited it. Task design should specify the relationship, because usted vs. tú varies by family and region.
6. No exit ramp. A well-formed request gives the hearer room to refuse (“y si no se puede, no hay problema”). He leaves none.

Key point for scoring: every item above is a pragmatic target, not a grammar target. The lesson is that accuracy and appropriateness are separate constructs, and the role-play asked for the second.

Scoring as the rubric stands: both would score high. Marcos gets full marks for grammar, appropriate vocabulary, and task completion-he did make a request. That results tells me the rubric is invalid for the unit's stated objective. A rubric that cannot distinguish a mitigated request from a bare volition statement is not measuring la cortesía at all.

Rubric revision: add a fourth analytic row, Adecuación sociolingüística / registro y cortesía, and weight it as a substantial share of the task score.

• 4: Consistent address form; at least two mitigating strategies; justification integrated; hearer given room to refuse.
• 3: Appropriate address form; one mitigation; minor omission.
• 2: Address form inconsistent, or a single weak mitigation; request still hearable as imposing.
• 1: Bare imperative/volition with no mitigation or address form.

Under this row, Ana scores at the top and Marcos at the bottom-even though his grammar row stays at the top. That is the intended profile, and it is a fair one: the task asked for a mitigated request.

On “carro”: it is Puerto Rican and widely used Caribbean Spanish, as standard in its community as “coche” is elsewhere. It must not be penalized under Vocabulary. Penalizing it would be dialect bias and would introduce construct-irrelevant variance-precisely the kind of scoring error that makes a rubric indefensible if a parent or administrator challenges it. Fix the Vocabulary row to say “variedad léxica apropiada a la región del hablante.”

On the laughter and the “ay, no sé” response: treat it directly. Ana's performance was arguably more appropriate, yet the class's reaction rewarded the confident native-like L2 student and punished the heritage speaker. Name that pattern in the debrief, and add to the assessment that students justify their choices-so the class evaluates reasoning, not accent or lexicon.

Both halves of the student's claim can be true at once, and the move is to separate them rather than choose one.

Validate the variety. “Regálame el carro” or “Quiero que me prestes…” may well be normal, unremarkable Spanish in the student's family and community. It is not an error of grammar, and I should not call it bad Spanish. Dismissing a home variety damages credibility and engagement, and it misrepresents how Spanish actually works.

Then separate acceptability from appropriateness. Two different questions are being merged:

• Is this well-formed Spanish? Almost certainly yes.
• Does it accomplish the task's specified social goal-mitigating a high-imposition request to a host mother who is not an intimate? If the assessment target is mitigation, then a bare volition statement misses the target in any variety. Register and politeness are functional targets; they are not dialect claims.

How I would set it up so this is fair:

1. Write the context into the prompt precisely: relationship, degree of familiarity, imposition size, region if relevant. Ambiguity is where these disputes breed.
2. Score the function, not the form. A student who mitigates with “¿Me harías el favor de…?” and one who mitigates with “¿Será que me puedes…?” both meet the target.
3. Allow a “justify your choice” component. If a student argues the context licenses the form, that argument can earn credit for sociolinguistic awareness-which is itself the learning objective.
4. Keep a clear, published distinction between dialect variation (never penalized) and register/appropriateness (the assessed target), and say so on the rubric.
5. When a student offers a regional form I am less sure of, I say so and check it rather than ruling from authority-modeling that Spanish is pluricentric is part of the curriculum.