An Analysis of Learning Materials for Speech Acts in English Textbooks for Vocational High Schools

• Main Authors: Ching-Hsiang Ku, 古青翔
• Other Authors: Michael Tanangkingsing
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/u9s8jm

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 應用英文系碩士班 === 103 === Communication in speech plays an important part in English teaching and speech acts have been one of the main issues in instruction. Based on the curriculum guidelines of vocational high school authorized by the Minister of Education, one of the goals on students’ language ability is to equip students with the ability to understand and express common expressions in daily life (e.g. greeting, compliments, apology) and to use those expressions in related settings appropriately. However, school textbooks are usually criticized for the reasons that they are not authentic materials and that the coverage of topics editors provide are not sufficient for students to use in the real-life settings. Previous studies have examined speech acts instruction in school textbooks from elementary school, junior high school, senior high school, to college (Boxer &; Pickering, 1995; Lin, 2005; Liou, 2006; Pai, 2009; Tien, 2006; Vellenga, 2004), but vocational high schools remained untouched. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze and evaluate the presentation of pragmatic content of the three series of textbooks intended for Taiwan’s vocational high schools (Dong Da, Far East and Lung Teng publishers). Specifically, the study examines how speech acts are presented in the textbooks and whether contextual information is provided to facilitate the learning of these speech acts. The results of the study were summarized as follows. First, with respect to the presentation of the four speech acts in the three series of textbooks, the results showed that these three series of textbooks drew attention on different proportions of speech acts. For example, compliments/ compliment responses and agreements/disagreements in Dong Da textbooks outnumbered those in the other two textbooks, while Far East textbooks contained more lessons on requests/ request responses and Lung Teng textbooks on apologies/ apology responses. Second, with regard to the context of the conversation, it was found that in most cases the context of the conversation was not complete in the three series of textbooks. This inappropriate description of the context may also result in the students’ misunderstanding and misuses of the form of speech acts. Finally, some suggestions for the revision of textbooks and pedagogical implications were given.