Evaluating pragmatics-focused materials
Abstract
Learners often find the area of pragmatics (that is, using speech acts such as requesting, inviting, and complimenting) problematic. Teachers are urged to teach pragmatic aspects of language, and make use of authentic samples of spoken discourse to do so. However, information about the effectiveness of pragmatics-focused instruction of this nature has been lacking. This paper describes how we evaluated a set of instructional materials targeting the speech act of requests. The materials aimed to raise learners’ awareness of native-speaker norms of requesting in an academic environment. They employed a ‘guided discovery’ approach in which the learners analysed samples of authentic spoken language. The findings of our evaluation showed that the learners found this experience positive. After instruction, their perceptions of the appropriateness of requests matched those of native speakers more closely than they did prior to instruction. These findings have implications for the development of pragmatics-focused materials.
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Errors of appropriacy may have more negative consequences than grammatical errors because they may characterize the non-native speaker as uncooperative, rude, and offensive.
“Meanwhile errors of appropriacy may have more negative consequence than grammatical errors since the earlier errors may characterize the non-native speaker as being uncooperative, rude and offensive (Crandall & Basturkmen, 2004).”
From A comparative study of the effect of teacher’s group and individual feedback on Iranian EFL learners’ learning of speech acts in apology letter writing (2020) · cites this paper as Crandall & Basturkmen, 2004
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Pourmousavi, Z., & Mohamadi Zenouzagh, Z. (2020) · Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education · doi:10.1186/s40862-020-00088-w · Cited by 17 · see citing works
- Authors
- Crandall, E.
- Corresponding author
- Crandall, E.
- Venue
- ELT Journal
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2004-01-01
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 38-49
- ISSN
- 0951-0893 (ISSN-L)
- 1477-4526
- OpenAlex
- W2045246249
- Cited by
- 131
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 6 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 19.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ELT Journal (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Linguistics and Language Analysis
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Second Language Acquisition and Learning
- Keywords
- pragmatics teaching, speech acts, requests, instructional materials evaluation, guided discovery learning, native speaker norms, learner perceptions, academic writing, EFL learners
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