1. Investigating the Challenges and
Opportunities for Developing Pragmatic
Competence of EFL Learners:
The Case of St. Joseph School in Adama
A thesis Defense
Prepared By:
Korie Shankulie
Advisor: Dr Haileleul Zeleke (PhD)
June 25/2012
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2. Table of Contents
1.Introduction
2. Review of Related Literature
3. Research Methods and Procedures
4. Summary of Findings
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
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3. 1.1. Background to the study
• In order to develop CC of learners there is a shift
from:
• Formal system of grammar rules to a more
communicative perspective;
• Language Usage rules to language Use rules;
• Formal and textual factors to interactional and
contextual factors because of the advent of Pragmatics;
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4. Background...
In Ethiopia:
• International communications are part of every day life activities;
• Cross-cultural communications
• Hence, pragmatics should be an important asset for students learning at
various levels of education;
• Pragmatic skills should be one of the objectives of teaching language
alongside other linguistic skills to help learners develop pragmatic
competence;
• However, instruction of English or the learning environment, most
commonly comprises of :
• non-native language teachers, who have no relevant trainings;
• a fairly large classroom full of learners with very dissimilar aptitudes,
• teaching materials, that are mostly textbooks, printouts, or grammar books.
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5. Background...
• Hence, teaching authentic language use in these
circumstances is very challenging and,
• the teaching materials and teachers should play an
integral role in offering the students a model of real-
life language use,
• pragmatic competence is considered to be a major
component of CC, yet little attention has been paid to
teaching and testing it,
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6. 1.2. Statement of the Problem
• Learning a language is more than just acquiring the
rules of grammar; learners must be able to use the
language as well; but textbooks are not that reliable in
this regard,
• Pragmatic ability is not only fundamental to the
smooth functioning of society, but did not receive
considerable attention in the EFL contexts
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7. Statement of...
• English language textbooks present the language to
students in terms of written and spoken language, but
their presentation of the language is not rich in
metalanguage and metapragmatic explanations,
• pragmatic competence is considered to be a major
component of CC, yet little attention has been paid to
teaching and testing it,
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8. Statement...
• EFL student teachers‟ curriculum and in-service
professional development program lack the inclusion
of pragmatic aspect of language teaching,
• pragmatic errors are often considered impolite, and
yet no research has been conducted on learners„ ability
to choose the proper use of language,
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9. 1.3. Objectives of the Study
• Investigate the challenges of teaching pragmatics in an
EFL setting,
• Analyze textbooks in terms of their pragmatic
contents,
• Explore opportunities/possibilities of teaching
pragmatics in an EFL setting,
• Discover whether students can choose appropriate
language in a given situation,
• Forward possible recommendations based on the
research results
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10. 1.4. Research Questions
• To what extent do the students‟ textbooks provide pragmatic
information for learners to acquire pragmatic competence?
• What are the challenges perceived by high school teachers to
develop students‟ pragmatic competence?
• How do the teachers perceive students‟ textbooks pragmatic
contents-are they challenges or opportunities for them?
• Do students choose appropriate language based on a
provided situation/context?
• To what extent do teachers consider other possibilities
than the textbook, for teaching pragmatics in an EFL
setting?
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11. 1.5. Significance of the study
• It can help syllabus designers to revise English language
syllabuses to improve the quantity of pragmatic features and
the quality of their presentations in the textbooks,
• It could be worthwhile resource for teachers who are
interested to develop their own teaching materials for
teaching pragmatics,
• It would be helpful for textbook writers who are wishing to
have an informed opinion on the pedagogical implications
derived from research on pragmatics,
• It fills the research gap that exists in studying challenges and
opportunities to teaching pragmatics in an EFL setting;
• the research would be of importance for the other
researchers to look into the field attentively.
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12. 1.6. Delimitation of the Study
• It doesn‟t include all micro level approaches to
pragmatics: indexicals, presupposition, implicature and
speech acts;
• It confined itself to the study of pragmatic competence
with particular emphasis on some speech acts and
challenges to developing pragmatic competence of
EFL learners;
• It doesn‟t incorporate all upper high schools in the
Adama Town.
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13. 1.7. Limitation of the Study
• The research faced time and many constraints,
• Lack of local researches has hampered the depth of
this research work,
• the research was first designed to be conducted on
homemade English language textbooks;
unfortunately, the new textbooks authored by foreign
writers came into use in the middle of the research
work which might throw some light on the research
result,
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14. 2. Review of Related Literature
2.1 Communicative Competence
• The ultimate goal of learning or teaching a language is to
develop CC
• CC is relative
• CC is abstract
• The ability for use/to communicate appropriately
• Knowledge
• Acceptability
• Appropriateness
• Adequacy
• Grammaticalness
• CC is social evaluation of behavior as appropriate or
inappropriate
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15. Review...
Competence (underlying/tacit knowledge)
Performance (actual communicating ability)
Performance:
Use-rules of socioculture-social context
Usage-rules of grammar-linguistic context
What, when, how to speak or not speak=rule of
SC
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16. Review...Models of CC
Discourse Grammatical
competence competence
Strategic
Sociolinguitic
Competenc competence
e
CC
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17. Communicative Competence
skills
knowledge
attitude
awareness
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18. Pragmatics
 relatively late comer in linguistics;
relatively late comer in linguistics
became increasingly popular through researchers‟
explorations of linguistic facts;
pragmatics involves social as well as individual norms
in language production and comprehension (use);
social, cultural and psychological factors play
important roles in language use
The study of language use in context
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19. ...pragmatics
Social
status
Selection
culture factors age
Social
distance
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20. ...pragmatics
language
users context
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21. ...pragmatics
Contextually appropriate language use includes:
What can be said;
Where it can be said;
When it can be said;
How to say it most effectively;
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22. ...pragmatics////
Why do we have to teach pragmatics?
 Developing learners‟ CC;
 Minimizing sociopragmatic failure;
 Minimizing cultural shock;
 Creating awareness of the different sociocultural rules
and different concepts of politeness ;
 Turn taking;
 Opening and closing conversation;
 Staying on topic;
 All words are not used by all people;
 Some words are only used in certain places/time;
 Meaning depends on use or meaning =use;
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23. ...pragmatics
Least polite Invitation
 Come over to my house and play with
me.
 What are you doing after school? You
should come and play.
 Can you come over after school and
play at my house?
 Can you please come over to my house
and play after school?
• Most polite
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24. Challenges vs. Opportunities
Teacher’s
textbooks
talk
Teachers’
textbooks
training
Class size culture
authentic
attitude inputs
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25. 3. METHODS AND PROCEDURE OF THE STUDY
A descriptive method was employed in the study;
Textbooks and respondents were the major sources of
the data;
Categorical data i.e. nominal or observations that can be
coded and ordinal or observations that can be ranked
were used;
The existing problems were investigated;
 Inferences were drawn from the responses;
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26. Procedure
Designing tools
Stating the
and Selecting Collecting data
problem
samples
Reviewing Giving meaning to
Pre-test
literature the data
Setting research Conclusions and
Stating objectives
questions recommendations
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27. Sampling
• Purposive sampling was employed for
textbooks content analysis;
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28. ...Sampling
Coding Categorizing Counting
Describing
Interpreting Tabulating
and analysing
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29. ...sampling
• Systematic sampling was employed for
respondents;
• Out of 339 students 183 were selected, based
on table of statistics, for questionnaire and
MDCT;
• All four (4)teachers teaching grades 9-12 were
selected for questionnaire.
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30. Research Tools
Content
analysis
MDCT Perception
Data questionnaire
Classroom
observation
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31. Methods for Data Analysis
• Data were organized based on the research questions;
• As the research method was chiefly qualitative, data were
analysed descriptively;
• Data of closed type items with ratings were analyzed using mean
scores and percentiles;
• Qualitative type data were analyzed verbally through
examination of themes ;
• The results were virtually summarised in line with the research
questions;
• Conclusions were drawn based on the statement of the
problem;
• Recommendations were forwarded on the basis of the
conclusion as indicated in the research objectives.
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32. 4. Research Results
Challenges:
• the pragmatic features in the current students‟
textbooks were not explicitly laid down
(metalanguage and metapragmatic) table 1;
• No scenarios or situations were presented so that
the learners will learn how pragmatic expressions
are used in a real life like simulations (table 2);
• No clear instructions were given so that learners
actively act up on those communicative acts (table
2),
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33. Research...
• textbooks rarely provide enough information for
learners to successfully acquire pragmatic
competence (table 4 & 5);
• Teachers did not receive adequate course/topic on
pragmatics in teachers‟ training (table 6 & 7);
• Lack of time, class size, relevant
training, insufficient materials, knowledge of target
culture, etc. were challenges for teachers to impart
pragmatic knowledge to students (table 10);
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34. Research...
• Majority of the student respondents rated refusals, apologies,
compliments, complaints, requests, as difficult and above in
their own words (table 18):
 „because of the English language very hard language‟
 „b/c it is so complicated‟
 „b/c it need high skill in speaking‟
 „b/c those are the difficulties that I get when I speak English
with others‟
 „b/c they need more explanation and experience on it‟
 „b/c things are difficult when we talk in English‟
 „because I use them rarely and some of them frequently‟
 „I just said that because those things are even hard in Amharic.‟
 This implies there is a need gap.
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35. Research ...
• Regarding MDCT, the majority of the
participants‟ scored between 6 and 10 (37.8%)
(table20) .
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36. Conclusions
• The content analysis indicated that the current English textbooks for
Ethiopia upper high schools, i.e. grade 10 and 11 are containing only
meager features of pragmatics;
• Instead of being opportunity the textbooks are challenges to teaching
pragmatic competence;
• Most of the metalanguage explanations are very shallow and there are no
metapragmatic explanations at all.
• teachers seldom use pragmatic instruction in classrooms, and mostly
students have to spend time by themselves developing pragmatic
competence without explicit instruction.
• Communicative activities in the classroom will provide valuable production
practice for learners, but they will not generate the type of sociolinguistic
input that learners need;
• This study provides information about the current state of pragmatic
instruction, challenges of teaching pragmatics in real classrooms, and
teachers‟ awareness of teaching pragmatics.
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37. Recommendations...
• it is necessary for the textbook writers to write user friendly
textbooks in terms of providing pragmatic information to
both the teachers and students;
• textbook writers should take note of procedures of
teaching, selection of authentic materials, designing of task
and approaches to testing pragmatic features of language;
• teachers also should be able to receive sufficient knowledge
in the area of pragmatics while they are on job or taking
undergraduate courses;
• researches should be conducted exploring the effects of
instruction in pragmatic aspects of the English language in an
EFL setting;
• pragmatics should be taught on its own right instead of being
taught as a portion in linguistic courses of undergraduate
studies.
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38. Implications
• Further researches need to be conducted to observe as
to how high school teachers can develop the pragmatic
competence of learners;
• Further researches should also examine students‟ oral
requesting, apologizing, complimenting, complaining, tha
nking, refusing, etc. when students are unaware;
• Pragmatic competence is one of the vital components of
communicative competence that needs to be considered
in EFL teacher education programs;
• Educational administrators should take “pragmatics” into
consideration when designing curriculum guidelines for
English subjects.
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39. „What one thinks is
acceptable, another finds it
offensive!‟
The End.
Thank You So Much!
?
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