The Learning of Complex Speech Act Behaviour

Abstract

The study reported in this article concerns itself with the learning and teaching of the more subtle and complex features of the speech act of apology in English. Based on the knowledge that we have to date on apology speech act behaviour, we addressed ourselves to questions relating to the efficacy of teaching such elements as: choice of semantic formula; appropriate length of realization patterns; use of intensifiers; judgment of appropriacy and students' preferences for certain teaching techniques. In order to attempt and answer these questions we carried out a training study with I8 adult learners of English, speakers of Hebrew. The study consisted of : a) a pre-teaching questionnaire aimed at assessing the subjects' use of apologies; b) a teaching materials packet covering three classroom sessions and c) a postteaching questionnaire. The findings suggest that although we cannot present clear cut quantitative improvement of the learners' speech act behaviour after the given training programme, we find that there is an obvious qualitative approximation of native like speech act behaviour with respect to types of intensification and downgrading, choice of strategy and awareness of situational factors. We feel, therefore, that the teaching of speech act behaviour is a worthwhile project even if the aim is only to raise the learners' awareness of appropriate speech act behaviour.

Vol. 2, No. 4, in December 2009

“…Andrew D. Cohen (1990) pointed out that the success in language learning is based on learners themselves, especially their own factors and abilities to make full use of learning opportunities. College English learning should be the development in the direction of students' active and independent learning and practice, including English reading in the morning, independent practice at class, finishing assignments, reading English books, listening to English broadcast, participating in second class activities, online learning, self-assessment and son on, in order to promote students to learn independently and effectively.…”

“…On the other hand, in role plays, learners can acquire interactional skills such as conversational management, manipulation of turn-taking mechanism, use of intensifiers and downgraders, and accurate choice from a range of strategies (House, 1996). Olshtain & Cohen (1990) suggest that corrective feedback and discussion are useful teaching techniques after learners present their talks. The instructor, together with the whole class, can comment on the appropriateness of the performances in terms of coherence of organization, strategy use, as well as lexical and grammatical productions, or the learners can be invited to contrast their perceptions, expectations, and awareness of L1 and L2 cultures.…”

“…For example, Olshtain & Cohen (1990) reported that most students in their study highly valued the teacher's explanations of English apology realizations and the information sheets pertaining to the main points of the lesson. They attributed the learners' preference for formal presentation to the fact that adult learners may have felt more comfortable with explicit presentation of realization patterns than with experiential types of activities.…”

Iranian English Teaching Applicants' Request and Apology Speech Acts: Special Focus on Language Proficiency

“…The request and apology WDCT forms were adopted from Jianda (2006) and Olshtain & Cohen (1990), respectively. The MDCT for the current study encompasses 10 different situations of request and 10 others for apology speech acts.…”

Improving Oral Fluency of EFL Students with Different Proficiency Levels through Explicit Instruction of Face Threatening Strategies

“…Under this new perspectivization, the role of teaching in the development of L2 pragmatics has received a lot of ink in the review of the literature (see Martinez-Flor et al, 2003;Kasper, 2001;Kasper & Rose, 2002). In general, the popular belief is that instruction on a variety of pragmatic features can benefit the learners considerably (Olshtain and Cohen, 1990 Similarly, EFL students' awareness of politeness strategies as a focal point in interlanguage pragmatics accentuated the pivotal role of language learners' sensitivities concerning the explicit-implicit instruction of pragmatic knowledge (Ellis, 2005;Ellis et al, 2009). As an illustration, explicit knowledge of modal markers, their function, and interpretation in authentic contexts can assist learners to make an optimal use of speech acts where face work plays a crucial function.…”