Email this article 
Hide
Show all
A Textbook Evaluation of Speech Acts: The Case of English Result Series
Abstract
The present work aimed to investigate the frequency of occurrences and proportions of speech acts of complaints and compliments in the four volumes of the course book English Result (Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, and Upper-intermediate), by Mark Hancock and Annie McDonald (2009), published by Oxford University Press. Investigation of the two speech act strategies was based on complaints strategies (Olshtain and Weinbach, 1987) and compliment strategies (Wolfson and Manes, 1981). It was found that the books were rich in terms of the number of the two speech acts, but in presenting them, there were one or two dominant strategies in both cases. Chi-square analysis demonstrated that there was a significant difference in the proportion of complaint and compliment strategies through the four course books. In general, the books were reported to provide learners with adequate amount of complaints and compliments, but with low variations in strategy types, which may result in learners not having sufficient conceptual and practical knowledge of speech acts to use them appropriately in different contexts. Based on the findings of this study, it seems necessary to incorporate more authentic and helpful instruction of speech acts along with the course books, to improve the learners’ performance in real life communication.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Ang-Abbey, L. (1991). Transfer behavior of Hokkien Chinese speakers in apologizing. Borneo Research Bulletin, 23, 14–35.
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. New York: Oxford University Press.
Azizifar, A. Koosha, M. , & Lotfi, A. R. (2010). An analytical evaluation of Iranian high school ELT textbooks from 1970 to the present. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 3, 36-44.
Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Blum-Kulka, Sh. (1987). Indirectness and politeness in requests: same or different?. Journal of Pragmatics, 11 (2), 131–146.
Bouton, L. F. (1996). Pragmatics and language learning. In L. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning, Monograph 7 (pp. 1-20). Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Division of English as an International Language.
Boxer, D. (1993). Complaints as positive strategies: What the learner needs to know. TESOL Quarterly, 27 (2), 277-299.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1 (1), 1-47.
Chen, Sh. E. (2003). Compliment Response Strategies in Mandarin Chinese: Politeness Phenomenon Revisited. Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics, 29 (2), 157-184.
Cordella, M. (1990). Apologizing in Chilean Spanish and Australian English: a cross-cultural perspective. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics Series, 7, 66–92.
Cordella, M. (1991). Spanish speakers apologizing in English: a cross-cultural pragmatics study. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 14 (2), 115–138.
Delen, B., & TAvil, Z. M. (2010). Evaluation of four coursebooks in terms of three speech acts: Requests, refusals and complaints, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9, 692–697.
Garcia, C. (1989). Apologizing in English: politeness strategies used by native and non-native speakers. Multilingua, 8 (1), 3–20.
Hancock, M., & McDonald, A. (2009). English Result Elementary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hancock, M., & McDonald, A. (2009). English Result Pre-intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hancock, M., & McDonald, A. (2009). English Result Intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hancock, M., & McDonald, A. (2009). English Result Upper-intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
House, J., & Kasper, G. (1981). Politeness markers in English and German. In: F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational Routine (pp. 157–186). The Hague: Mouton.
Jebahi, Kh. (2011). Tunisian university students’ choice of apology strategies in a discourse completion task, Journal of Pragmatics 43, 648–662.
Kim, H.J. A study of compliments across cultures: The effect of sociolinguistic trasnfer of EFL learners, Korea: Korea University.
Lipson, M. (1994). Apologizing in Italian and English. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 32 (1), 19–39.
Manes, J. (1983). Compliments: A mirror of cultural values. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 96-102). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Manes, J., & Wolfson, N. (1981). The compliment formula. Conversational Routine, ed. by F. Coulmas (pp. 115-132). The Hague: Mouton.
Marti, L. (2006) Indirectness and politeness in Turkish–German bilingual and Turkish monolingual requests, Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 1836–1869.
Meier, Ardith J. (1995). Passages of politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 24, 381–392.
Meier, Ardith J. (1996). Two cultures mirrored in repair work. Multilingua, 15 (2), 149–169.
Meier, Ardith J. (1997). Teaching the universals of politeness. ELT Journal, 51, 21–28.
Olshtain, E. (1989). Apologies across languages. In: Blum-Kulka, Sh., House, J., & Kasper, G. (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies, advances in discourse processes (pp. 155–173). Ablex: Norwood.
O’Neill, R. (1982). Why use textbooks? ELT Journal, 36( 2), 104-111.
Salazar Campillo, P. (2007). Examining Mitigation in Requests: A Focus on Transcripts in ELT Coursebooks. In E. Alcón Soler, & M. P. Safont (Eds.), Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning (pp. 207-222). The Netherlands: Springer.
Stadler, S. A. (2011). Coding speech acts for their degree of explicitness, Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 36–50.
Suszczynska, M. (1999). Apologizing in English, Polish and Hungarian: different languages, different strategies. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1053–1065.
Usó-Juan, E. (2007). The presentation and practice of the communicative act of requesting in textbooks: Focusing on modifiers. In E. Alcón Soler, & M. P. Safont (Eds.), Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning (pp. 223-243). The Netherlands: Springer.
Vellenga, H. 2004. Learning pragmatics from ESL & ESL textbooks: How likely? TESLEJ, 8 (2). Retrieved May 15, 2010 from http://www.teslej. org/wordpress/issues/volume8/ej30/ej30a3/
Weizman, E. (1989). Requestive hints. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-Cultural Pragmatics (pp. 71–96). Ablex: Norwood.
Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts: Polish vs. English. Journal of Pragmatics 9, 145–178.
Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Wolfson, N. (1983). An empirically based analysis of complimenting behavior in American English. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 82-95). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Wolfson, N., & Manes, J. (1980). Compliment as social strategy. International Journal of Human Communication, 13, 391-410.
Wouk, F. (2006). The language of apologizing in Lombok, Indonesia, Journal of Pragmatics. 38, 1457–1486.
Yasemin, K. (2009). Evaluating the English textbooks for young learners of English at Turkish primary education. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1, 79–83.
Zarei, Gh. R. (2011). Functional analysis of Iranian learners’ L2: Complimenting in written discourse. International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), 5(2), 109-122.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/ijalel.v.1n.6p.199
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.