CC BY-NC-ND
0Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect PfOCSCl ¡0
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 93 (2013) 1306 - 1310
3rd World Conference on Learning, Teaching and Educational Leadership (WCLTA-2012)
Do current EFL coursebooks work for the development of L2 pragmatic competence? The case of suggestions
Mehzudil Tugba Yildiz Ekin *
Uludag University Faculty of Education, Bursa 16059, Turkey
Abstract
Many learners may not be aware of socially and culturally appropriate forms of the second language (L2). Therefore, students must be provided with language teaching materials that present authentic-like examples of speech act strategies to develop their pragmatic competence. The aim of this paper is to describe how the speech act of suggestion is presented in current EFL (English as a foreign language) coursebooks. In this regard, the cases of suggestions included in 8 pre-intermediate coursebooks were investigated based on the strategies of suggestions. The coursebooks were also compared according to whether they are good representatives of authentic-like materials for presenting suggestion to facilitate the development of L2 pragmatic competence. © 2013TheAuthors. PublishedbyElsevierLtd.
Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Ferhan Odaba§i
Keywords: Language teaching materials; pragmatic competence; speech acts; suggestions; coursebooks.
1. Introduction
Coursebooks are the inevitable materials for EFL contexts where they provide the primary (perhaps only) form of linguistic input (Kim & Hall, 2002; Vellenga, 2004); however, it is questionable whether they provide sufficient and adequate information for EFL learners to successfully acquire pragmatic competence. Studies related to the adequacy of coursebooks in teaching language functions that reflect authentic conversation have found that EFL coursebooks rarely include adequate or comprehensible explanations of how conversation works in English (Berry, 2000; Burns, 1998; Cane, 1998; Grant & Starks, 2001). Therefore, students must be provided with language teaching materials that present authentic-like examples of speech act strategies to develop their pragmatic competence. The aim of this paper is to report the methodology and results of a qualitative and quantitative study which indicates how the speech act of suggestion is presented in current EFL coursebooks. In this regard, the cases of suggestions included in 10 pre-intermediate and intermediate level coursebooks were investigated based on the taxonomy of linguistic realization strategies of suggestions (Martinez-Flor, 2004).
Even though there have been complaints about the inadequacy of coursebooks' language (Bardovi-Harlig, Hartford, Mahan-Taylor, Morgan & Reynolds, 1991; Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Cane, 1998; Grant & Starks, 2001; Wong, 2001), the authenticity of language samples has not been developed. Bardovi-Harlig points out that "it is important to recognize, that, in general, coursebooks cannot be counted on as a reliable source of pragmatic input for classroom language learners" (2001, p. 25). Researchers argue that language samples in coursebooks need to be similar to the results found in studies of conversation analysis. "Only through materials that reflect how we really
* Mehzudil Tugba Yildiz Ekin. Tel.: +90-224-294-2247 E-mail address: metuy76@uludag.edu.tr
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Ferhan Odaba§i
doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.033
speak, rather than how we think we speak, will language learners receive an accurate account of the rules of speaking in a second or foreign language" (Boxer & Pickering, 1995, p. 56).
The speech act of "suggestion", which is the focus of the present study, belongs to the group of directive speech acts which, according to Searle (1976), are those in which the speaker's purpose is to get the hearer to commit him/herself to some future cause of action. "In a suggestion, the speaker asks the hearer to take some action which the speaker believes will benefit the hearer, even one that the speaker should desire" (Rintell, 1979, p. 99).
Schmidt et al. (1996) claim that the speech act of suggestions in L2 pragmatics have received less attention in the literature in comparison to the speech act of requesting (Rintell, 1979; Banerjee & Carrell, 1988; Bell, 1998; Matsumura, 2001; Martinez-Flor, 2004). These studies indicate that learners cannot show native-like performance in formulating suggestions and their findings have led researchers to investigate what language learners are actually exposed to in classrooms and coursebooks (Bouton, 1996; Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Vellenga, 2004; Jiang, 2006). These kind of studies related to the adequacy of the input in teaching materials, particularly coursebooks, are essential for developing language learners' pragmatic competence.
Based on the findings of the previous studies of pragmatics in coursebooks, the present study was conducted to see whether the speech act of suggestions are presented appropriately in current EFL coursebooks based on the taxonomy proposed by Martinez-Flor (2004). Therefore, the present study aims to answer the following questions: e What kind of suggestion strategies are presented in language coursebooks? e How do EFL coursebooks differ in their amount of suggestion strategies? e Are these strategies appropriate (authentic-like) for the situations they were presented in?
2. Methodology
For the purpose of the present study, 10 coursebooks (5 pre-intermediate and 5 intermediate) coursebooks were analyzed according to the taxonomy given in Table 1.
Table 1. Taxonomy of suggestion linguistic realisation strategies (adapted from Martinez-Flor, 2004)
STRATEGY
EXAMPLE
Performative verb
Noun of suggestion DIRECT Imperative
Negative imperative CONVENTIONALISED FORM Interrogative forms (Specific formulae)
Possibility / Probability
Should
Conditional
INDIRECT Impersonal
I suggest that .... / I advise you to .... I recommend that you .... My suggestion would be .. Try using .. Don't try to ....
Why don't you ... / How about ... / What about ....
Have you thought about ..
You can / could / may / might ....
You should ....
You need to ....
If I were you I would .......
One thing would be .... / It would be nice if .... A good idea would be ... / It might be better to .... It would be helpful if you .. / Here is one possibility . There are a number of options that you .... I have heard that it might be better ....
The amount of strategies was counted and the situations were evaluated according to their similarity to authentic-like situations. Ten coursebooks, five of which are pre-intermediate level (Face2Face, New Interchange, Headway, Opportunities, Grapevine) and five of which are intermediate level (Face2Face, New Interchange, Headway, Clockwise, Snapshot), were analyzed in order to determine the amount and quality of the presentation of authentic-like situations and pragmatic information regarding the speech act of suggestion based on their linguistic realization strategies.
3. Results
The first two research questions of the study investigate the kind of the suggestion strategies presented in EFL coursebooks and the difference between the amounts of strategies included in the coursebooks. Table 2 reports the frequencies and overall percentages of the suggestion linguistic realization strategies included in the coursebooks.
Table 2. Frequencies and overall percentages of the strategies
Pre-Intermediate Intermediate
F2 F OPP HEA DW. NEW INT. GRA PEV. F2 F CLC KW. HEA DW. NEW INT. SNA PS. TOTAL
DIRECT f %
Performatives 0 0 1 4 1 3 6 0 0 0 15 5,1%
Noun of suggestion 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0%
Imperatives 4 6 6 6 1 2 5 4 0 2 36 12,3%
Negative imperatives 4 2 1 3 2 0 6 1 0 0 19 6,6%
CONVENTIONALISED
Interrogative (spec for.) 10 10 5 8 3 2 8 3 6 10 65 22,3%
Possibility/ probability 6 6 1 2 2 2 5 5 5 1 35 12%
Should 12 8 10 6 15 4 6 0 3 2 66 22,4%
Need 8 4 2 0 0 0 1 0 4 0 19 6,6%
Conditional 5 6 1 2 3 4 0 0 0 1 22 7,5%
INDIRECT FORM
Impersonal 0 2 0 6 3 0 0 0 2 0 13 4,5%
Hints 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0,7%
TOTAL 49 46 27 37 30 17 37 13 20 16 292 100%
The mostly presented strategy within direct strategies is "imperative" strategy (n=36, 12;3%). Secondly, the strategy of "negative imperative" is given in the coursebooks (n=19, 6,6%). The use of performatives as a direct strategy of the speech act of suggestion is in the third place (n=15, 5,1%). However, no examples are found presenting the direct strategy of "noun of suggestion".
For conventionalized forms, strategy of "should" is the most repeated strategy (n=66, %22,4). Close to this strategy, it can be seen that the strategy of "specific formulae" has a percentage of 22,3%. When the results of the conventionalized forms are considered, the least presented strategy is said to be the "need" (n=19, 6,6%).
Indirect forms of suggestion strategies are the least mentioned ones in current EFL coursebooks. Considering the results, it can be concluded that the "impersonal" strategy is the mostly stated strategy (n=13, 4,5%) when compared to the strategy of "hints" (n=2, 0,7%) which is the other type of indirect strategy.
The results also indicate that 70,8% of the strategies found in the coursebooks are conventionalized forms of suggestion strategies. 24% of the strategies are considered as the direct strategies (n= 70). However, the indirect strategies involved are only 5,2% of all three types of suggestion linguistic realization strategies.
When it comes to the difference between the coursebooks in terms of the amount of strategies, "Face2Face" (n=49) and "Opportunities" (n=46) are the ones that mostly involve the suggestion strategies among the pre-intermediate coursebooks and in general. Within the intermediate level coursebooks, "New Interchange" pre-intermediate and "Clockwise" presents 37 examples of suggesting strategies. The coursebooks which have the least examples are the intermediate level "Face2Face", "Snapshot" and "Headway", n=17, n=16, n=13, respectively.
Whether the suggestion strategies are appropriate (authentic-like) for the situations they are presented in is the focus of the third research question of the present study. For this purpose, the situations were analyzed according to their authenticity and appropriacy. Below some examples related to the authenticity of the strategies are given.
Example 1 (Grapevine, Unit 27)
Megan : I like myself the way I am , thank you.
Dr Garfunkel : Sure you do. But maybe if you changed your hair style... or your nose! I can recommend a really good plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills.
When the examples of the performative strategy are evaluated, it can be concluded that most of the examples are appropriate. The example above is between a doctor and a patient, so the doctor can make a suggestion directly as he has an authority over the hearer. "Noun of suggestion" strategy is not found in the coursebooks. This does not reflect real-life situations. The coursebooks should involve this strategy to illustrate the variety of the strategies in daily use The strategies of "imperative" and "negative imperative" are the mostly presented direct strategies in the books.
Example 2 (Clockwise)
Try using the ones you are good at. Practice the ones you are not so good at. (p.4)
Try to avoid getting caught in the traffic! (p.93)
The examples are rarely presented in a context. Though they are infrequent, examples can be considered sufficient as the imperative forms are regarded as the most impolite and direct form of suggestions. "Imperatives can easily sound rude or angry, depending on the situation and your tone of voice. "Please" helps to soften a command. Using modals (such as would and could) is a more polite and indirect way to tell someone to do something." (Vellenga, 2004). Among the conventionalized forms the "specific formulae" and "should" are more than the others as they are typical of suggestions (Martinez-Flor, 2004).
Example 3 (Opportunities, p.63)
This example is taken from Function File Part which is about "Telephoning/ Making Suggestions"
.. .Make suggestions : Why don't we go on Saturday morning. Do you fancy doing something on Friday night? Would you like to go?
Make arrangement: Let's meet at 6.30 outside the cinema.
Example 4 (F2F-pre-int, p.67)
A: You should read 'True Lives' .
B: What's that?
A: It's really funny.
The "specific formulae", "should" and "possibility/probability" examples taken from the coursebooks indicate that learners are exposed primarily to conventionalized forms of suggestions. The last type of strategy is indirect strategies including "impersonal" and "hints". There are 15 indirect strategies in total, 13 of which is "impersonal" and only 2 of them are "hints". Six of the 13 examples are from "New Interchange" pre-intermediate.
Example 5 ((New Interchange-pre-int, p.79):
A: What should you do for a cold?
B: It's sometimes helpful to eat garlic soup.
C: It's a good idea to take some vitamin C
As the speaker's true intentions are not clearly stated in these strategies, they do not show any conventionalized form and there is no indicator of the suggestive force in the utterance, so the hearer has to infer that the speaker is actually making a suggestion. Supplementary pragmatic information and variety of situations are necessary for the learners who are using these coursebooks to develop their pragmatic competence, particularly, suggesting strategies.
4. Discussion
The quantitative results of the study indicate that the most frequent strategy type is conventionalized forms (70,8%). The strategies included in pre-intermediate levels are more than the ones in intermediate level coursebooks. The presentation of the speech act of suggestion in the coursebooks is, for the most part, pragmatically inadequate. Students are occasionally given models (audio recordings or more commonly, as printed dialogues or examples) of the suggestions with very little contextual information or explicit metapragmatic discussion. Only in the grammar parts, an association between suggestions and a particular grammatical form (specific formulae, should, imperatives), which may lead students to think that is the only option for constructing an utterance of suggestion.
The fact that suggestions are associated with the modal "should", which is only one of the possible ways speakers realize that speech act limits the learners and causes them to use formulaic language regardless of the contexts in which they produce those suggestions. Part of the challenge in acquiring target language pragmatic competence is learning to choose from a variety of forms which perform similar functions and then choosing appropriately (Bardovi-Harlig, 2002). If students are provided with a one-to-one correspondence between language forms and functions, they will not able to develop a pragmatic toolbox with which to make choices about language and convey intentional illocutionary force (Vellenga, 2004). Similar to the study conducted by Vellenga (2004) in most of the books, there is no metapragmatic discussion on appropriacy. As there are a variety of different linguistic forms or strategies to perform suggestions that vary greatly in terms of illocutionary force, this lack of information puts EFL learners with little target language exposure, at a disadvantage in terms of acquiring pragmatic competence.
Terms such as formal and informal, polite and impolite are used to categorize suggestions throughout the coursebooks. However, descriptions of situations which may require formal or polite usage in terms of social
relationships between interlocutors, status differences, or other contextual factors are rarely included. This kind of information will help learners have a certain level of awareness about the target language norms so that they can make appropriate choices as their level develops. The students should be given the explanatory tools to be able to make intentional choices about being rude and/or polite (Grant & Starks, 2001).
In the coursebooks evaluated, formality and the differences between speaking and writing are not mentioned. However, it would be helpful for students if they can find contextual information which would indicate appropriate contexts which would require formal usage, nor any discussion of the differences between formality and register.
In sum, this analysis of ten EFL coursebooks shows there is a need for adequate input for students related to the suggesting strategies. Although the amount of conventionalized forms are sufficient across all books, the fact that a larger percentage of the strategies are of this type is an important point to consider as there is a dearth of examples of direct and ,especially indirect suggesting strategies. The coursebooks which included a specific unit or section for teaching suggestions were only two coursebooks providing explicit information about suggestions. However, this is provided by specific formulas and the modal "should". As mentioned earlier, this can limit learners in their pragmatic performance. As Kasper (1996) claims one of the causes of learners' non-native-like pragmatic performance is the incomplete or misleading input provided by pedagogical materials. Therefore, the main responsibility of the classroom instruction, primarily coursebooks, is providing learners with authentic and representative language for target-like language production (Jiang, 2006). Implications of this study are clear: more investigation into the use of coursebooks in the classroom needs to be done to determine the efficacy of coursebooks for acquisition of pragmatic competence. Similar studies related to other common speech acts will contribute to coursebook development so that coursebooks to be published in the future include presentation of a variety of linguistic forms along with explicit metapragmatic explanations and contextually rich opportunities for students to practice those forms and help them gain pragmatic awareness to achieve language appropriacy.
References
Banerjee, J. & Carrell, P.L. (1988): Tuck in your shirt, you squid: Suggestions in ESL.. Language Learning, 38, 313-364.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2001). Evaluating the empirical evidence: Grounds for instruction in pragmatics? In K. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching (pp. 13-32). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2002). Pragmatics and second language acquisition. In R.B. Kaplan (Ed.) The Oxford handbook of applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxfor University Press.
Bardovi-Harlig, K., Hartford, B.A.S., Mahan-Taylor, R., Morgan, M. J., & Reynolds, D. W. (1991). Developing pragmatic awareness: Closing the conversation. ELT Journal, 45, 4-15.
Berry, R. (2000). "You-see" friendly metalanguage: What effect does it have on learners of English? International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 38, 195-211.
Bouton, L.F. (1994). Can NNS skill in interpreting implicature in American English be improved through explicit instruction? - A pilot study. In L. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning, vol. 5. Division of English as an International Language Intensive English Institute (pp. 88-109). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,. Boxer, D., & Pickering, L. (1995). Problems in the presentation of speech acts in ELT materials: The case of complaints. ELT Journal, 49, 44-58. Boxer, D., Pickering, L., (1995). Problems in the presentation of speech acts in ELT materials: the case of complaints. English Language Teaching Journal 49 (1), 44-58.
Burns, A. (1998). Teaching speaking. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 18, 102-123.
Cane, G. (1998). Teaching conversation skills more effectively. The Korea TESOL Journal, 1, 31-37.
Grant, L., & Starks, D. (2001). Screening appropriate teaching materials: Closing from textbooks and television soap operas. International Review of
Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 39, 39-50. Jiang, X. (2006). Suggestions: What should ESL students know? System, 34, 36-54.
Kasper, G., Schmidt, R., 1996. Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18 (2), 149-169. Kim, D., & Hall, J. K. (2002). The role of an interactive book reading program in the development of second language pragmatic competence. Modern Language Journal, 86, 332-348.
Mandala, S. (1999): Exiting advice. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and language learning, vol. 9 (pp. 89-111). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Martinez-Flor, A. (2004): The effect of instruction on the development of pragmatic competence in the English as a foreign language context: A study
based on suggestions (Doctoral dissertation). Castellón, Spain: Universitat Jaume I. Castellón. Matsumura, S. (2001). Learning the rules for oVering advice: A quantitative approach to second language socialization. Language Learning 51 (4), 635679.
Rintell, E. (1979). Getting your speech act together: The pragmatic ability of second language leamers. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 17, 97-106. Schmidt, R., Akihiko, S., Zhigang. W., & Hy-Sook, J. (1996). Suggestions to buy: Television commercials from the U.S., Japan, China, and Korea. In S..
M. Gass and J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures (pp. 285-316). Berlin: Moutonde Gruyter. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vellenga, H., (2004). Learning pragmatics from ESL & EFL textbooks: How likely? TESL-EJ, 8 (2), 1-17.
Wong, J. (2001). "Applying" conversation analysis in applied linguistics: Evaluating dialogue in English as a second language textbooks. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 40, 37-60.
