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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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1.6. Delimitation of the Study
It doesnt 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 doesnt incorporate all upper high schools in the
Adama Town.
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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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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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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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Review...Models of CC
Strategic
Competenc
e
Discourse
competence
Grammatical
competence
Sociolinguitic
competence
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Communicative Competence
skills
knowledge
awareness
attitude
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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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...pragmatics
Selection
factors
Social
status
age
Social
distance
culture
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...pragmatics
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language
context users
...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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...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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...pragmatics
Least polite








Most 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?
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Challenges vs. Opportunities
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textbooks
Teachers
training
Class size
attitude
Teachers
talk
textbooks
culture
authentic
inputs

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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Procedure
Stating the
problem
Pre-test
Stating objectives
Setting research
questions
Reviewing
literature
Designing tools
and Selecting
samples
Collecting data
Giving meaning to
the data
Conclusions and
recommendations
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Sampling
Purposive sampling was employed for
textbooks content analysis;
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...Sampling
Coding Categorizing Counting
Tabulating
Describing
and analysing
Interpreting
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...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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Research Tools
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Data
Content
analysis
Perception
questionnaire
Classroom
observation
MDCT
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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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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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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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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Research ...
Regarding MDCT, the majority of the
participants scored between 6 and 10 (37.8%)
(table20) .
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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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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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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,
thanking, 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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What one thinks is acceptable,
another finds it offensive!

The End.
Thank You So Much!
?
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