《牛津初中英语》之指令类言语行为概述.docx

牛津初中英语之指令类言语行为概述Chapter One Introduction1.1Background of the StudySince language competence encompasses grammatical competence and pragmaticcompetence, FL (Foreign Language) learners not only have to master the pronunciation,grammar and vocabulary of target languages, but also have to leam how to use the targetlanguage politely and accurately. However, studies of the development of FL knowledgehave tended to focus more on the acquisition of phonological, morphological, syntactic andsemantic forms than on the development of pragmatic ability (Kasper & Schimidt，1996).Moreover, researchers have indicated that the pragmatic performance of FL learners oftenseems to fall short of ideal expectations and even FL learners with high grammaticalproficiency are not necessarily competent in pragmatic aspects of the FL (Bardovi-Harlig& Hartford, 1990,1993; Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; etc). A typical case may be that FL learnersmay know several ways of thanking, requesting or complaining without being sure underwhat circumstances it is appropriate to use one form or another. Accordingly，developinglearners communicative competence, i.e., the ability to communicate appropriately, iscommonly recognized as the ultimate goal of language teaching (Kasper, 1997a; Uso-Juan& Martinez-Flor, 2006). Therefore, in recent years, a number of studies addressing thedevelopmental issues in pragmatic competence have reported encouraging evidence for thefeasibility and necessity of instruction of FL pragmatic knowledge (Kasper and Rose, 2002;Bardovi-Harlig, 1999).….1.2Purpose of the StudySeveral scholars have proposed their own standards of textbooks evaluation, but onecommon criterion is "to what extent a textbook has meet the set standards", i.e., to whatextent the textbooks comply with the "curriculum standards" (Van Elsetal, 1984;Hutchinson & Waters，1987; N. Grant, 1987; Cunningsworth，1995). Based on this criterion,it is crucial for us to examine to what extent has the currently-used English textbooks forChinese junior high school students met the English course objectives. The "EnglishCurriculum Standards" issued in 2011 has specified the overall objectives at the stage ofbasic education, i.e., to help students develop the overall ability of using English andenhance their mental development as well as comprehensive humanistic accomplishment.The development of comprehensive language using ability is based on the overalldevelopment of such aspects as students language skills, language knowledge, emotionalattitude, cultural awareness and learning strategies. Language skills and languageknowledge constitute the basis of comprehensive language using ability; culturalawareness avails the accurate understanding and appropriate use of language; effectivelearning strategies can help enhance learning efficiency and develop self-leaming ability;positive emotional attitudes can foster initiative learning and sustainable development.Supplemental to each other, the five aspects commonly promote students comprehensivelanguage using ability. The overall objective has explicitly indicated the developinent ofstudents pragmatic competence, i.e.，the appropriate use of the English language. In China,textbooks constitute the core of curriculum and teaching syllabus." />…Chapter Two Literature Review2.1 Studies on Pragmatic Evaluation of EFL TextbooksKasper (1996) holds that one of the causes of learners non-target-like pragmaticperformance is the incomplete or misleading input provided by pedagogical materials. Thisview is echoed by Ishihara. N & Cohen. A. D. (2010) who indicate that, in currentESL/EFL commercially marketed materials，empirically based information is rarely usedas the source for instructional materials in L2 pragmatics; instead, the majority ofpublished textbooks are written on the basis of the curriculum writers intuitions. However,"intuitions about language use often turn out to be wrong" (Biber et al" 2002:10).Accordingly，assessment of EFL textbooks from a pragmatic perspective has been thefocus of several studies. Before exploring the pragmatic assessment of EFL textbooks，we firstly discussprevious studies on evaluation of EFL textbooks in a broad way. Textbook plays a cruciallyimportant role in the process of EFL instruction. It performs as the specific embodiment ofcurriculum standards as well as the major tool with which teachers and students can fulfillthe instructional activities. At present, there are a great diversity of textbooks branchinginto various sorts and versions, but none of them is perfect or universal; accordingly, it isof vital importance and necessity to evaluate the quality of EFL textbooks (Lu Hongxia，2007). Tomlinson (1996) claims that textbook evaluation serves firstly as an approachthrough which we can understand how a textbook performs its role，then as a contributionto the Acquisition Theory and teaching practices, as well as a method for action researches.2.2 Studies on the Speech Act of DirectivesDirectives are those illocutionary speech acts in which the speaker s purpose is to getthe hearer to commit himself to some future course of action, i.e., the speaker attempts toget the hearer to do something. According to Searle (1976), directives are attempts to makethe world match the words. Inviting, suggesting, warning, threatening, ordering, requesting,asking, urging, telling (to), demanding, imploring, entreating, begging, urging, beseeching,etc. are all specific instances of this category. Of these speech acts，suggesting, requesting，inviting, warning, threatening and ordering are the most frequently-used in naturalinteractions (Dai Weidong, 2002), the presentation of which will be taken into investigationin our present study. Brown & Levinson (1987) claim that invitations, orders, requests,apologies, suggestions, threatening, warning, and insults are all examples of FTAs, whichcan threaten both the speaker s face (e.g., an apology) and the listener s face (e.g., arequest). Since the speech act of directives are those to get the hearer to perforin somefuture actions, the six most frequently-used acts of directives fall into the FTAs which maythreaten the listener s face.Chapter Three Theoretical Framework.313.1Theories of Pragmatics.33.2Language Competence.393.3The Approaches of Teaching EFL Pragmatic Knowledge.44Chapter Four Methodology.464.1Research Questions.464.2Textbooks Selected.464.3Working Definitions and Realizations of Investigated Speech Acts.504.4Questionnaire Designed.574.5Procedure.59Chapter Five Results and Discussion.615.1Presentation and Discussion of Directive Speech Acts.615.2Presentation and Discussion of Suggestions in the Investigated Textbooks.645.3Presentation and Discussion of Requests in the Investigated Textbooks.755.4Results and Discussion of the Questionnaire.86Chapter Five Results and Discussion5.1 Presentation and Discussion of Directive Speech Acts in theInvestigated TextbooksAs is shown in the above table, we find that among the six most frequently-useddirective speech acts, five are included, that is，the speech act of suggesting，requesting,inviting, ordering and warning. The act of threatening is not presented in the investigatedtextbooks at all. As for the percentage of each kind of presented speech acts, the act ofsuggestions ranks the first place with a carrier of 75.29%, the act of requests second with acarrier of 17.32%, ordering third with a carrier of 4.62%，inviting fourth with a carrier of2.54% and warning the fifth with a carrier of 0.23%,The speech act of suggestions takes the first place for three reasons. Firstly, weborrow Jiang s (2006) operational definition of suggestion，which incorporates advice，suggestion and recommendation, thus constituting a term with a larger sense. Secondly，there are special explanations about how to give advice in the textbooks which arefollowed by large quantities of communication practices.….ConclusionIn this chapter, we firstly report the findings of the study, which happens to answer thethree research questions. Then we discuss the pedagogical implications that the presentstudy could bring to both the EFL teachers and the EFL textbooks compilers. Finally, wepoint out the limitations of this study and give suggestions for further research. This thesis takes theories in pragmatics, i.e., the speech act theory, politeness theory,language competence and interlanguage pragmatics as its theoretical foundations, foundingitself on previous research achievements, answering the three research questions asfollows.Firstly, as indicated in 5.1，the six speech acts except that of threatening falling intodirectives are incorporated in the investigated textbooks; nevertheless, their weight are notaverage, with suggestions and requests presented in high frquency. Inviting, ordering,warning and threatening, however, are received scarce presentation, especially that ofwarning which occurs only once and threatening none. Apart from that，except that the actof suggestions are partially explained explicitly under certain contexts, the speech acts ofrequesting, inviting, ordering and warning are all introduced via implicit approach, whichrequire learners to induce rules from examples given to them (Ellis, 1999)，and explicitpragmatic information regarding these acts are lacked. As a result, learning pragmatics interms of the four acts is highly unlikely if teachers don t compensate the inadequacy viaexplicit explanation (Vellenga, 2004).Reference (omitted)