From research to the textbook
Assessing speech acts representation in course book series for students of
English as an L2
Studies on speech acts represent an extensive, multidisciplinary
area of research, encompassing diverse theoretical approaches such as those
stemming from pragmatic, conversational, discourse, cognitive, constructional,
and functional perspectives. Altogether, these theories offer an eloquent
picture of the type of knowledge that is necessary to perform and understand
speech acts correctly. English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers need to be
aware to what extent such contemporary research findings on speech acts have
made their way into present-day textbooks, and this paper sets out to elucidate
this issue.
First, we look at contemporary studies on speech acts in search
of the key theoretical aspects of illocutionary performance that should ideally
be included in ESL course book series. Second, we analyze a collection of seven
such course series to assess to what extent they incorporate those theoretical
findings. Finally, we consider the weaknesses of present-day textbooks in
relation to the teaching of illocutionary acts, thus providing an informed
ground for their elaboration and improvement.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Contemporary theoretical advances on speech acts
- 2.1Advances stemming from pragmatic and conversational theories of speech
acts
- 2.2Advances stemming from functional theories of speech acts
- 2.3Advances stemming from cognitive and constructional theories of speech
acts
- 3.Representation of speech acts in ESL textbooks: Literature review
- 4.Corpus
- 5.Results
- 5.1ESL textbooks representation of Searle’s taxonomy of speech acts
- 5.2Representation of pragmatic/conversational analysis categories
- 5.3ESL textbook representation of functional analysis categories
- 5.4ESL textbooks representation of constructional/cognitive analysis
categories
- 6.Conclusions
-
References
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