The Teaching of Politeness in the Spanish-as-a-foreign-language (SFL) Classroom

This work takes its starting point in the importance of appropriately incorporating politeness into the teaching of any foreign language so as to educate speakers to be capable of maintaining an effective interaction with its native speakers. With this aim, we examine the treatment of communicative politeness in SFL teaching manuals and in particular in two key documents from this teaching field: the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Cervantes Institute Curriculum. In the second part, methodological guidance is offered for teaching politeness in a reflexive way in the SFL classroom.