Invetigating Challenges and Opportunities for Teaching Pragmatics in an EFL Context

1 | P a g e Investigating the challenges and opportunities for teaching pragmatics in an EFL Context, by Korie Shankulie, 2012. ASTU, Adama. Ethiopia <[email protected]> or <[email protected]>

INVESTIGATING THE CHALLENGES AND

OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPING PRAGMATIC

COMPETENCE OF EFL STUDENTS: THE CASE OF St.

JOSEPH SCHOOL IN ADAMA

KORIE SHANKULIE ARSIE

Adama Science and Technology University

‹[email protected]› or

‹[email protected]›

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the challenges and opportunities for teaching pragmatics in EFL context.

Learners often find the area of language use difficult. Teachers are advised to explicitly teach

pragmatic features of language and make use of authentic models of language to help learners

practice using appropriate language in social contexts. In spite of this, information about

pragmatic aspect of language and pragmatic-focused instruction is lacking in an EFL Ethiopian

context. Textbooks and teachers are an integral part of language teaching in general in an EFL

setting where there are no opportunities to learn the language informally outside the classroom.

However, the textbooks almost never provide adequate pragmatic information for students to

develop successfully their pragmatic competence. The findings indicated that there is a scarcity

of pragmatic information contained in the English for Ethiopia 10th

and 11th

grades textbooks,

and the variety of pragmatic information is limited. Most of the metalanguage explanations are

simple; and there are no metapragmatic explanations at all.

It is fairly possible to infer from the teachers’ response that well-designed teacher training and

teaching materials should be in place for teachers to develop students’ pragmatic competence.

Moreover, the teaching hours to cover the issue of pragmatics; thus, to properly manage each


lesson may solve the current problem of teaching pragmatics in the classroom. The results of this

study also showed that teachers seldom use pragmatic instruction in classrooms, and mostly

students have to spend time by themselves developing pragmatic competence without explicit

instruction. Overall, the pragmatics instruction is immature and needs to be developed, and

teachers need professional training to be aware of how to teach pragmatics effectively.

Although the learners’ self-perceived competence mean score was high, their MDCT result was

low; and this confirmed that self-perceived competence and the actual performance never match.

This is why according to Dewaele (2011) higher levels of self-perceived competence are linked

to lower levels of communication which in fact has to be further investigated in our own context.

The research was entirely qualitative except that some simple statistical calculations were used to

compute the frequency, mean and percentage of the numerical data. The data were drawn from

the content analysis of two student textbooks (grade 11 &12), responses of four teachers teaching

grade 9-12 and self-perceived competence and pragmatic awareness test results of 183 students.

The findings of this study have implications for teaching pragmatics to EFL learners, the

development of pragmatic-focused materials, future research and well-designed teacher training.

Key Words: Pragmatic competence, challenges and opportunities for developing pragmatics in

EFL setting, textbook content analysis, self-perceived-competence, MDCT

Introduction

Learning a foreign language is regarded nowadays as an essential component in the curricula at

different educational levels. In particular, learning the English language has become necessary

given its widespread use throughout the world according to House and Kasper (see, Martinez-

Flor, 2004). However, in order to make learners become communicatively competent in the

English language, there a shift from previous theoretical frameworks, which considered language

as a formal system based on grammatical rules, towards a more communicative perspective

(ibid). Alcaraz (see, Martinez-Flor, 2004) points out that the shift from language usage rule to

language use rule was possible due to the advent of pragmatics as a specific area of study within

linguistics that favored a focus on interactional and contextual factors of the target language

(TL).


As international and cross-cultural communication has become part of everyday life in Ethiopia,

pragmatic competence should be an important asset to a person and thus, rehearsing pragmatic

skills alongside other linguistic aspects should be one of the objectives of language teaching in

formal education. In Ethiopia, formal instruction of English or the learning environment, most

commonly comprises of a non-native language teacher, a fairly large classroom full of learners

with very dissimilar aptitudes, and the teaching materials, which refer to anything that can be

used to facilitate the learning of a language, such as textbooks, printouts, or grammar books.

Teaching authentic language use, which resembles the way the language is used in the “real

world” outside the classroom, in these circumstances is very challenging and the teaching

materials should play an integral role in offering the students a model of real-life language use.

Although language teachers have the right to develop their own materials, the most commonly

used materials are only published textbooks. As Vellegna (2004) aptly points out, the textbook is

often the very center of the curriculum and syllabus. In such cases, textbooks used should be

carefully designed, to make sure that they are perfectly in line with the learning objectives and

learners’ need. Basically, the chosen textbook should provide all the important linguistic inputs

outlined for each stage of learning and life outside the school. However, studies have shown (for

example Vellegna 2004, Peiying, 2007; 2008) that textbooks rarely provide enough information

for learners to successfully acquire pragmatic competence.

Similarly, ‘knowledge about how conversations work and what the sociocultural norms and

practices are in each communication culture is often inadequately presented in the textbook

contents’ (Bardovi-Harling 2001:25). In order for students to learn how language really works,

they need authentic materials of authentic communication situations. The demand for pragmatic

input is particularly relevant when upper secondary school teaching materials are concerned,

because at this level, students are expected to be quite proficient language users. In other words,

at upper secondary school stage, they are at an advanced level and competent to understand the

subtleties of English. Most students in upper secondary school study English as their compulsory

language, that is, the language that has started in the lower stage of the comprehensive school

and that is obligatory to all students.


Practicing pragmatic abilities in a classroom requires student-centered interaction. The teaching

materials should provide a relatively wide range of exercises designed to rehearse the

sociopragmatic knowledge of students. In a similar vein, Kasper (1997) suggests the inclusion of

activities such as role-play, simulation, and drama to engage students in different social roles

and speech events. The activities in the textbooks provide valuable opportunities to practice the

pragmatic and sociolinguistic skills that students need in their everyday interactions outside the

classroom.

Pragmatic competence can also be acquired through raising awareness on the pragmatic aspects

of second/foreign language, and in this process, the metalanguage, that is, “a language which is

used to describe language” (Lyons 1995: 7), can assist significantly. In teaching and learning of

any language, metalanguage is essential, both in classroom interaction and within the teaching

materials. In language instruction context, metalanguage helps the learners to understand the key

elements of the target language and the major differences between the target language and the

learner’s L1. Evidently, ‘as the learner’s metalinguistic awareness increases, the level of

language proficiency increases as well’ (Renou 2001: 261), and therefore the teaching materials

should be rich in pragmatic metalanguage and teachers should also be aware of the significant

role of learning pragmatics.

In conclusion, this study has focused on challenges and opportunities for teaching pragmatic

competence. Besides, it was the intent of this research to evaluate teachers’ perception of the

textbooks content in terms of their pragmatic content. Furthermore, it was the concern of this

study to look at what teachers think are impediments for them to deliver pragmatic instructions

in the EFL setting. Moreover, the students’ self-perceived competence and their ability to choose

appropriate language based on a given context was the other concern of this research.

Statement of the Problem

Equipping Ethiopian students with communicative competence in order to help them

communicate effectively in all walks of their lives and international communication is truly

essential. English has been used as a medium of instruction from grade 7 or 9 upwards since long

time ago, but problems in learning and teaching English have been observed ever since (Jarvis,

as cited in Amlaku, 2010) had given his personal account of experiences and observations.


Presently, says Amlaku for his part ‘[teachers] at schools and employers in industries have been

complaining about the low level English language competence of students and graduates,

respectively’ (p.9). But what are the challenges that pull back language learners not to

competently communicate when there is a need to do so?

Although there have been studies about communicative language teaching in Ethiopian schools,

the investigation on pragmatic information in English textbooks used in Ethiopia has not yet

been conducted. Similarly, whether there exist any additional pragmatic features in teacher’s

book as a resource for teachers has not been questioned. Likewise, whether English language

teachers bring in outside materials to help learners develop pragmatic competence has not yet

been investigated in the setting of the current research.

There is paucity of pragmatic contents and their presentations are marginalized as compared to

other language items. There are no courses offered to pre-service language teachers in the area of

pragmatics as a result of which teachers do not complement textbooks with inputs to help

learners acquire pragmatic competence. Although, it is vitally important to acquire

communicative competence, there are no research emphases in the area of pragmatics in the

present research area.

The current research, therefore, looks into the challenges and opportunities in teaching

pragmatics to language learners in the EFL context and the way forward to it.

Objectives

This study was aimed at:

Analyzing English textbooks on the basis of thanking strategies, apologizing strategies,

complimenting strategies, complaining strategies, refusing strategies, and requesting

strategies presented in Aijmer (1996); and Ishihara and Cohen, (2007).

Analyzing the discourse completion data collected from St. Joseph 10th

and 11th

grade

students,

Investigating the challenges teachers in EFL setting, particularly those in St. Joseph

School, were facing in teaching pragmatic aspects of the English language,


Considering these concerns, the aim of this study was two-fold: to deal with those theoretical

approaches that inform the process of learning speech acts in particular contextual and cultural

settings; and, secondly, to present a variety of methodological proposals, grounded on research-

based ideas, for the teaching of the major pragmatic features in foreign language classrooms.

Research Questions

This study attempted to answer the following questions:

1. To what extent do the students’ textbooks provide pragmatic information for learners

to acquire pragmatic competence?

2. What are the challenges perceived by high school teachers to develop students’

pragmatic competence?

3. How do the teachers perceive students’ textbooks pragmatic contents-are they

challenges or opportunities for them?

4. Do students choose appropriate language based on a provided situation/context?

5. To what extent do teachers consider other possibilities than the textbook, for teaching

pragmatics in an EFL setting?

Significance of the Study

In this research an attempt was made to examine the socio-pragmatic aspect of the students’

textbook, the challenges faced by teachers and the availability of opportunities to teaching

pragmatic competence to EFL learners. Generally, this research is expected to have the following

significance:

• It can help syllabus designers to revise English language syllabuses to include

substantial quantity of pragmatic features and the quality of their presentations in the

textbooks.

• The research would also be worthwhile resource for teachers who are interested to

develop their own teaching materials for teaching pragmatics/speech acts.

• The research would be helpful for textbook writers to consider including the substantial

amounts of the pragmatic aspect of the English language in the English language

textbooks and wishing to have an informed opinion on the pedagogical implications

derived from research on pragmatics/speech act performance.


• It fills the research gap that exists in studying challenges and possibilities to teaching

pragmatics in an EFL setting of Ethiopian context.

• Above all, the research would be of importance for the other researchers to look into

the field attentively.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to

meaning. It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic

knowledge (e.g. grammar, lexicon etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of

the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred intent of the

speaker (Kasper, 2004), and so on. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users

are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time

etc. of an utterance (Cohn, 2008). The ability to understand another speaker's intended

meaning is called pragmatic competence (Kasper, 1997). An utterance describing pragmatic

function is described as metapragmatic (Verschueren, 2000). Pragmatic awareness is

regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of language learning, and comes only

through experience. Hence, learners of EFL context face challenges in understanding the interplay

of language, language users and their intentions, and the social context.

Challenges of Teaching Pragmatic Competence in EFL Setting

In foreign language context teachers are non-native speakers of English language and they

need to be well-prepared for teaching the pragmatic aspect of knowledge of language. In

addition to this fact there are no sufficient, or no course, is offered to teachers either during

pre-service or in-service education programs in the area of pragmatics. This situation is what

El-Okda (2010) calls as ‘paucity of pragmatic courses in both pre-service teacher education

programs and in-service professional development’ (169). If the student teachers or those

teachers that are handling the teaching of English language are provided with the pragmatic

courses, ‘[they] can help their students see the language in context, raise consciousness of

the role of pragmatics, and explain the function pragmatics plays in specific communicative

event’ (Brock and Nagasaka, 2005:20).

bword://!!ARV6FUJ2JP,linguistics/

bword://!!ARV6FUJ2JP,grammar/

bword://!!ARV6FUJ2JP,lexicon/

bword://!!ARV6FUJ2JP,intention/

bword://!!ARV6FUJ2JP,ambiguity/

bword://!!ARV6FUJ2JP,metapragmatics/

bword://!!ARV6FUJ2JP,experience/


The second pillar in developing the pragmatic competence of learners is ELT material.

Language teaching materials need to frequently include pragmatic materials so as to help

learners develop pragmatic competence, because ‘teachers in EFL settings, where there are

relatively few opportunities for students to use the language in communicative contexts’

(Brock and Nagasaka, 2005), will make use of textbooks as the major source of pragmatic

knowledge. However, the attempt of including very few mini-dialogues for certain speech

acts and that are contrived and de-contextualized does not help the learners develop their

pragmatic competence or does not represent the reality outside the classroom (El-Okda,

2010:180). Let alone the external environment, ‘many students do not know how to make

polite requests in English in the classroom’ (Brock and Nagasaka, 2005:21).

Teachers in most cases complain for the unmanageable class size. Large classes, limited

contact hours and little opportunity for intercultural communication are some of the features

of the EFL context that hinder pragmatic learning (Eslami-Rasekh et al., 2004; Rose, 1999).

Understanding teachers' perceptions and beliefs is important because teachers, heavily

involved in various teaching and learning processes, are practitioners of educational

principles and theories (Jia, Eslami & Burlbaw, cited in Eslami and Fatahi, 2008). Teachers

have a primary role in determining what is needed or what would work best with their

students. Findings from research on teachers' perceptions and beliefs indicate that these

perceptions and beliefs not only have considerable influence on their instructional practices

and classroom behavior but also are related to their students' achievement. In most cases

teachers do not give attention to pragmatic/communicative functions in the classroom.

Omaggio (see in Uso-Juan, and Martinez-Flor, 2008) gives the following three reasons for

neglecting intercultural/pragmatic competence in the language class:

1. Teachers usually have an overcrowded curriculum to cover and lack the time to spend

on teaching culture, which requires a lot of work;

2. Many teachers have a limited knowledge of the target culture and, therefore, afraid to

teach it;

3. Teachers are often confused about what cultural aspects to cover (p.165).


Possibilities/Opportunities for Teaching Pragmatics in EFL Classroom

What opportunities are offered for pragmatic learning? The research works have made

mention of such opportunities as: opportunities for pragmatic input: teacher talk (Kasper,

1997; Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford, 1996; Nikula, 2008), textbooks (Salazar, 2007; Uso-

Juan, 2007) and audiovisual material (Alcón, 2005; Fernández Guerra, 2008; Martínez-Flor,

2008).

Although typically an ESL environment is thought to be superior to an EFL environment for

learning language, especially the pragmatics of a language, some studies show that this is a

sweeping generalization and not necessarily true. According to Wallace (2011) ‘Pragmatics

can be successfully acquired in an EFL setting’ (p.274). Furthermore, some think that lack

of exposure to the target language in an EFL setting hinders students’ development of

pragmatics. In fact, researches show that well-designed textbooks and explicit pragmatics

instruction can be more effective than implicit pragmatics instruction.

Savignon (2006:10) discusses about shaping or designing language curriculum that entails

five components out of which one is “language for a purpose, or language experience.”

Language for a purpose or language experience is “the use of language for real and

immediate communicative goals”. She argues that for not all learners are taking a new

language for the same reasons, teachers should do the following in selecting language

inputs:

It is important for teachers to pay attention, when selecting and sequencing

materials, to the specific communicative needs of the learners. Regardless

of how distant or unspecific the communicative needs of the learners,

every program with a goal of communicative competence should pay heed

to opportunities for meaningful language use, opportunities to focus on

meaning as well as form (pp. 11-12).

The Role of Language Teacher’s Talk

Teachers vary in their attitudes to ´teacher talk´ according to findings. Some of them accept

that it is useful source of language input for all language levels, except from the more

advanced ones. Others regard it as an important part of the early stages of learning, but


believe it should be abandoned as soon as possible” (Lynch as quoted in Adriana 2009:1).

There are at least three main reasons that make teacher talk worth studying and improving.

The reasons are as follows:

a. People have recognized the vital link between comprehension and the progress made

in the language classroom.

b. Studies of classroom language have shown that certain aspects of teacher talk, such as

the way we ask questions, influence the way learners use language.

c. It is not easy for learners to understand what the teacher is currently trying to focus

their attention on (ibid).

Due to its importance, it is inevitable to make sure that the teacher talk fulfils certain

criteria. First of all, it should be simplified, but not unnatural. It needs to exhibit a certain

level of redundancy (words like let me see, in fact, well, etc.) and words, together with

structures, should be repeated at regular intervals.

The Role of Textbooks

Textbooks are key component in most language programs. In some situations they serve as

the basis for much of the language input learners receive and the language practice that

occurs in the classroom. They may provide the basis for the content of the lessons, the

balance of skills taught and the kinds of language practice the students take part in. In other

situations, the textbook may serve primarily to supplement the teachers’ instruction.

Bardovi-Harlig (2001) argues that since teachers’ talk cannot be considered as a

pragmatically appropriate model for learners, “textbooks with conversations are designed to

be models for students, and yet they generally fall short of providing realistic input to

learners” (p. 25).

She suggests that textbooks should be used cautiously:

Any textbook should be used judiciously, since it cannot cater equally to

the requirements of every classroom setting. In bilingual and multilingual

situations, there are special limitations on the amount of English language

teaching that can be done via the textbook. The textbook can present

examples of common difficulties, but there are problems specific to

different language groups which are left for the teacher to deal with. It is


also likely that a textbook will outlast its relevance because of changes in

the language policy of the community for which it was written (Bardovi-

Harlig, 2001:24).

Therefore, textbooks are always at the center of curriculum although there are some

limitations attributed to them with regards to their pragmatic contents.

The Role of Culture [Local and Target Culture]

People may meet with various problems in intercultural communication. The knowledge of

target language’s culture is as important as its grammar or vocabulary. Perhaps more to the

point, a lack of cross-cultural awareness can be a severe hindrance in the understanding of a

message which is linguistically accurate or comprehensible. As a rule, people are much less

tolerant of cultural bumps and cultural shocks than they are of grammatical mistakes and

lexical insufficiency.

Language is inseparable from culture. Thus, when learners learn a language, they learn

about culture; and as they learn to use a new language, they learn to communicate with other

individuals from a different culture. Magnifying the significance of target language culture

in learning a foreign language, Jie (2010) opines:

Through analyzing and comparing the anecdotes of pragmatic failure in

cross-cultural communication from the aspects of lexicon, syntax and

discourse, some pragmatic strategies are suggested in intercultural

communication. To improve learners’ cultural awareness and

communicative competence, a cultural-linguistic approach in foreign

language teaching should be adopted (p.1).

A language cannot exist in vacuum. It has to express some objective function when

utterances are made or some text is written. Regmi (2011:2) points out “When we learn a

new language, we need to adopt the culture of the target language to a certain extent because

the cultural aspect comes amalgamated with the target language.” However, what about the

learners and their own culture? Regmi again has the following to say with regards to this

question:


The learners have their own set of cultural experiences and objectives of

using a language. They have their own cultural amalgamation which has to

be addressed during target language learning process to make it

meaningful and relevant to the learners. We can assume that integration of

local culture and context is inevitable while learning a target language

(ibid).

Thus, local context becomes inseparable from the use of language. This is because, “…

students want to see cultural elements from both target language culture and local culture in

foreign language classrooms as well as in language learning materials” Devo and Yasemin

(2010:4).

Method of the Study

This chapter deals with the processes involved in selecting the research design, instruments,

and subjects of the study. Even though the investigation of the problem did not confine itself

to a particular method, qualitative method has been taken up to a large extent. The main

thesis of the study was an attempt to explore the challenges being faced by English language

teachers to teach pragmatics to their students, and investigate the manifestation of contents

of pragmatics/social language in the current EFL textbooks. For this purpose, therefore, a

descriptive research method was chosen as it is used to specify or describe a phenomenon

without conducting an experiment.

Research Design

The study was principally designed to be qualitative. Questionnaires, observations, discourse

completion tests and content analysis seemed to be appropriate instruments to collect data

for the study since objectively recorded teachers and students behaviors such as actions,

utterances and verbal expression of their attitudes (opinions) towards the concept can be

elements of descriptive studies (Mc Arthur 1983).

Procedures of the Study

This study consisted of the following methodological steps. First and foremost, the

researcher conducted pretest- at this step the researcher has attempted to design some open

ended discourse completion test questions in order to asses pragmatic awareness of the


learners. After the current research’s groundwork was finished, formulating research

questions, stating the motive behind the research, stating the limitation and delimitation of

the study, stating the significance of the study followed. Following the scheme of the

research, related discourses were reviewed. Next to reviewing related sources, research tools

that were proper to the study were chosen and designed. After instruments for data

collection were designed, determining sample size in question, and selecting an appropriate

sample from the data on hand took place.

Subsequently, before administering the tools, as it was part of the subjects of the present

study, textbooks were selected, and unit of analysis were defined, contents for analysis were

constructed and categorized; the contents were coded according to the established definition.

Afterwards, the questionnaires were administered to the language teachers with the intension

to elicit their perception of the pragmatic contents of the textbooks, their own awareness and

teaching of the pragmatic aspect of language and impediments they were facing in teaching

pragmatic aspect of the English language. Corresponding to this, questionnaires and

discourse completion tests were distributed to the participant students to assess their

perception of their own language ability and performance respectively. The questionnaires

for the teachers were delivered on hand. Discourse completion tests were distributed to the

sampled students in a classroom, in collaboration with the school teachers. All the

questionnaire and test papers were collected back. On the whole, the collected data were

descriptively analyzed, interpreted and conclusion were drawn.

Content Analysis Sampling Process

a. Sampling Units for Content Analysis

Since it was difficult to observe all contents, the researcher was forced to sample from

available content for coding pool. Units of analysis may differ from units of observation.

Sample selection depends largely on unit of analysis. The researcher was well aware that he

needed to be clear about unit of analysis before planning sampling strategy to avoid

problems that may occur later. The sampling could involve stratified, purposive, systematic

or random technique of selecting the representative population of the study. In the present

study the researcher planned to pursue purposive sampling.


Before sampling the representative data in relation to the central issues of the study, code

sheets were designed to identify the presence or absence of any elements relevant to the

focus of the study. The coding instructions and element definitions were written to ensure

that specific concepts were highlighted and received a specific level of attention in the text

before they would be coded as present.

b. Data Coding Scheme for Content Analysis

After the data collected for the study were categorized, the textbooks were coded for the

above elements while entering the data into tables for analysis. Coding is the heart of

content analysis. Coding is the process of converting raw data into a standardized form.

Each additional entry of datum collected from the textbooks was registered under each code.

Coding therefore is the technique to classify content in relation to a conceptual framework.

Like in the current study, pragmatic elements can be categorized, general pragmatic

information, language use rule, cultural context, physical context, approaches to

sociopragmatics competence, social context, physical context, mode of instruction, etc.

c. Procedure of Content Analysis of the Textbooks

The process of content analysis begins during or after the data processing/entering. Thus the

procedure consisted of formulating the research questions, collecting the data, categorizing

the data based on the research questions, indentifying the connection between the data

collected from the textbooks and that of the respondents’ and finally interpreting or

assigning meaning to the data obtained.

Participants

The research subjects were grade 10th

and 11th

students at St. Joseph School. The total

population of the study comprised of 339 students and 4 teachers. Out of the total population

of the students, the researcher drew sound sample systematically based on the table of

systematic random sampling; and the representative sample was 183. After the sample

population was decided, the total population was divided by the sample population that

resulted in every 1.85 student to be part of the sample. By rounding off the fractions the

students’ names were arranged alphabetically and every 2nd

student was included in the

sample. Moreover, all (100%) teachers that were teaching English language to grade 10th


and 11th

students were also part of the research subjects. Questionnaires were distributed to

all the participant teachers and students; and all of them had returned papers. In addition to

this, all the students included in the sample were seated for the MDCT.

Table 1:Data Representing the Research Participants

Participants Students % Teachers %

Males 102 55.73 3 75

Females 81 44.25 1 25

Total 183 99.98 4 100

Procedures for Collecting Data

Sampling of the participants

In the present research the researcher employed two stage schemes of sampling: the first

purposive sampling only focusing on high achiever students. This was to test the extent to

which the learners were aware of pragmatic/functional aspect of the target language. Doing

this in turn helped the researcher to proceed with the research work as designed with some

minor modification when need arisen. During the first stage sampling, only 15 students were

selected and tested. The second and final sampling was systematic random sampling so as to

include all students: low, medium and high achievers even though the aim was not to

distinguish between these groups of students. All teachers who are teaching 9th

-12th

grades

were part of the research.

Tools of Data Collection

Questionnaire

Primarily, sample questionnaires were designed and administered to teachers who were

teaching English the same grade level at selected school. Feedbacks were obtained that there

were no difficulties to comprehend the message of the questionnaire. Similar questionnaires

with minor modifications were administered to elicit teachers’ perception of the students’

textbooks with regards to pragmatic content and their own pragmatic background

knowledge.


Whereas, questionnaire for the students were newly developed in addition to the discourse

completions test that was completely changed from open ended format to multiple choice.

The change was made to alleviate the difficulty that might occur in analyzing the data and

MDCT is gaining its prominence to test learners’ pragmatic proficiency in EFL (Setouguchi,

2008:1). More than 99% of the questionnaires were close ended. The respondents were

asked to put only a tick mark (√) in the column of their choice or that represents

their perceptions of the rating scales. The rating scales range from one up to five where

1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=undecided 4=agree 5= strongly agree. In the data

analysis, the researcher has combined strongly disagree (1) and disagree (2), and

strongly agree (5) and agree (4) together.

Classroom Observation

Classroom observation has always been considered as one of the tools for data collection in

language acquisition researches, because it allows the study of a phenomenon or behavior at

close range with many of the contextual variables present (Waxman, 2011).

Thus, the researcher observed classrooms to ascertain the prevalent challenges to teach

pragmatics in EFL classroom as indicated by the teachers. This is to say that the observation

was mainly done to cross-check whether the problems forwarded by teachers exist or not.

The researcher was physically present in the classrooms to observe how the teachers use the

textbooks to develop pragmatic competence of learners through metapragmatic explanations

of the language in point or use materials prepared by themselves for the same purpose to

supplement the text books.

Pertinent lessons were observed based on agreement with the teachers, especially, when

there are oral presentations and speaking skills sessions. In each class teachers who took part

in filing out the questionnaire were observed. In all the observations conducted, the

researcher took the position where his presence did not disturb the class. In other words, the

observation was made without intervention in any way. Teachers were requested to

voluntarily cooperate with the researcher and the sections were chosen on random basis.


Discourse Completion Test

Discourse completion tests are used to elicit the pragmatic awareness of learners. Hence, the

researcher employed DCT/MDCT to cross check what students replied in self-perceived

competence questionnaires with what language they chose in MDCT.

Besides the DCT/MDCT, some questions were added at the end of the test paper so that

students can give what they believed as regards to the sources of their current knowledge of

pragmatics.

To test the difference in the learners’ awareness in the grammatical and pragmatic domains,

the researcher developed a contextualized pragmatic and grammatical judgment task

presented in a written format. The task was developed in five steps for pretest: (a)

identifying and constructing the test scenarios, (b) testing the scenarios through a production

(written) task, (c) selecting the targeted responses for the task, (d) piloting the judgment task

in written format, and (e) retesting the revised scenarios (MDCT format). In the first step, 7

scenarios were constructed to elicit one of five speech acts: complaint, compliment,

requests, apologies, and refusals. To ensure that learners interpreted the scenarios as

requiring the targeted speech act, the researcher asked 15 (purposively selected) secondary

School EFL students to carry out a standard discourse completion task (DCT). They were

given a scenario and asked how they would react, as in Example 1.

You are wearing a new shirt and a classmate looks at you and says: “This shirt looks great

on you! Blue is a great color for you.”

You answer: _____________________________________________________________

The study was open ended and exploratory in nature. It asked learners to report whatever

they were thinking and then examines those reports to gain insights into what they know

about pragmatics and how they acquire pragmatic knowledge and ability.

Content Analysis

The purpose of this research is first to investigate the impediments faced by language

teachers to teach pragmatics and second to analyze aspects of the content of pragmatics

manifested in the students’ textbooks and their classes to determine if certain elements (e.g.,

apology, compliments, complain, request, thanks, etc) are present. While content analysis, if


used properly, can indicate the presence (or absence) and extent of elements that may be

signs of quality or effectiveness, based on what previous studies or other literature have

established about those elements.

As Krippendorff (2004) indicates:

Content analysis is potentially one of the most important research

techniques in the social sciences. The content analyst views data as

representations not of physical evidence but of texts, images, and

expressions that are created to be seen, read, interpreted, and acted on for

their meanings, and must therefore be analyzed with such uses in mind.

Analyzing texts in the context of their uses distinguishes content analysis

from other methods of inquiry. (p. xiii)

Content analysis includes, for instance, comparing the frequency of single words, phrases, or

things in a text, or the space dedicated to them in a piece of work. The purpose of the

content analysis was to get the research data to a form that is easier to perceive, and thus to

help in drawing the conclusions. The conclusions do not, however, pop up straight from the

analyzed data, because content analysis can only give direction to theoretical discussion.

According to writers, content analysis is a scientific way of making observations and

collecting data from a document. Further precise definition of content analysis is provided

by Krippendorff, (2004): “Content analysis is a research technique for making replicable and

valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the context of their use (p.18).

This definition of content analysis best suits the current study. In this definition it is

deducible that content analysis is a research technique; which implies that content analysis

involves specialized procedures. As a research technique, content analysis provides new

insights by increasing the researcher’s understandings regarding the phenomena under study.

Krippendroff, further argues that content analysis is a scientific tool (ibid); that is employed

to collect and analyze data.

For validity and reliability of the whole work, the researcher employed triangulation so as to

not concentrating on just one source of information. He approached the topic from different


points of view by combining qualitative data from discourse completion tests (DCTs),

questionnaire for teachers and qualitative data from content analysis using checklists

designed for the same purpose. He used theories and background knowledge from books and

journals or articles that guide him to approach the topic in the right way.

Procedures for Data Analysis

In the process of data analysis the first step was organizing the data by research questions

because organizing by research questions draws together all the relevant data for the exact

issue of concern to the researcher and it preserves the coherence of the research. With

respect to the content of the textbook, coding the content according to the established

definitions, categorizing the data, counting the frequency of each code in the textbooks and

tabulating was done. After the data were gathered from the textbooks, the students and the

respective teachers, both qualitative and quantitative analyses were geared up. Content

analysis and questionnaire were chief data gathering tools. Once the data obtained through

textbook content analysis, questionnaires, discourse completion test and classroom

observations were organized, the next step was description of the data. Thence, the meaning

was given to the data. This stage involved explaining the findings and triangulation for

veracity and validity (accuracy) of the data. The last stage of data analysis was reporting or

drawing conclusion and looking for implications that were dealt with in the next chapter.

RESULTS

The research findings showed that based on the inventory made pertaining to the presence

and absence of the pragmatic features in the students’ textbooks, there is a dearth of

language use contents in the plethora of other linguistic features that almost constituted

above 90% of the textbooks contents. It was also evident from the data analysis that the

pragmatic elements that were only given a lip service were given insufficient metapragmatic

and metalanguage explanations. Hence, it is one of the challenges to teaching pragmatics in

Ethiopian EFL context.

The other research result was that teachers did not bring in outside materials to complement

the paucity of pragmatic contents of the English language textbooks so as to facilitate the

opportunities for teaching and learning pragmatics in the classroom. Evidence for this was


where 100% of the teachers responded unanimously that no teacher could be singled out for

bringing in outside materials to instruct pragmatics in EFL setting where there are rare

opportunities to learning pragmatics.

Further research result was that the majority of the participant students scaled that most of

the communicative acts or social functions of language that they were tested for are difficult.

As a result of which most of them scored below average in MDCT. The classroom

observation results were also consistent with what was detected from the textbooks

inventory, teachers’ responses and that of students’ responses that there were no lessons or

interactions directed to the development of pragmatic competence in the classrooms.

Table 2.Communicative Acts in the Textbooks

Com

munic

ativ

e A

cts

Top

ic /

typ

es

stra

tegie

s

Exam

ple

s or

stra

tegie

s o

r

reali

zati

on

of

stra

tegie

s

Book

1

Book

2

Com

pli

men

ts appearance/possessions e.g., You look absolutely beautiful!) √ x

performance/skills/abilities (e.g., Your presentation was excellent.) √ x

personality traits (e.g., You are so sweet.) √ x

Ref

usa

l

Direct refusals (e.g. ‘No’, ‘I can’t’, ‘I don’t think I can’) x x

Statement of regret (e.g. ‘I’m sorry’) x x

Statement of positive opinion (e.g. ‘I’d love to’, ‘I wish I could’) x x

Excuse, reason, explanation (e.g. ‘I have to study for the test’) x x

Gratitude (e.g. ‘Thank you’) x x

Statement of future acceptance (e.g. ‘Perhaps some other time’) x x

Indefinite reply (e.g. ‘I’m not sure’, ‘I don’t know’) x x

Statement of alternative (e.g., ‘How about the movies’) x x

Statement of empathy (e.g. ‘No offence to you’) x x

Th

an

kin

g Good wish to hearer (e.g. ‘Have a nice trip’, ‘Hope you have

fun’)

x x

Thanking someone explicitly (e.g. Thanks, thank you, thank you for,

thank you very much, thanks a lot, fine

thanks…)

√ √

Expressing gratitude (e.g. I’m grateful…) x x


Expressing the appreciation of

the addressee

(e.g. That’s kind of you, that’s nice of

you…)

x x

Expressing the appreciation of

the act

(e.g. That’s lovely, it’s appreciated…) x x

Acknowledging a debt of

gratitude

(e.g. I owe a debt of gratitude to…) x x

Stressing one’s gratitude (e.g. I must thank you…) x x

Expressing emotion (e.g. Oh, thank you…) x x

Suppressing one’s own

importance[self-denigration]

(e.g. I’m an ingrate, I’m so careless) x x

Ap

olo

gie

s

Explicitly apologizing (e.g. I apologize) √ x

Offering/presenting one’s

apologies

(e.g. I present my apologies) x x

Acknowledging a debt of

apology

(e.g. I owe you an apology) x x

Expressing regret (e.g. I’m sorry, I’m regretful …) √ x

Demanding forgiveness (e.g. Pardon me, forgive me, excuse me…) x x

Explicitly requesting the

hearer’s forgiveness

(e.g. I beg your pardon, ) x x

Giving an explanation or

account

(e.g. I’m sorry “The bus was late,” it’s so

unusual…)

x x

Self-denigration or self

reproach

(e.g. How stupid of me, how awful, I ought

to know this)

x x

Minimizing responsibility (e.g. I didn’t mean to…, I thought this

was…, )

√ x

Expressing emotion (e.g. Oh, I’m so sorry…,) x x

Acknowledging responsibility

for the offending act

(e.g. It’s my fault…,) x x

Promising forbearance from a

similar offending act

(e.g. I promise you that will never happen

again)

x x

Offering redress (e.g. Please let me pay for the damage I

have done)

x x

Req

ues

tin

g

Asking about ability to do

something[ability]

(e.g. Can you come to the party?

Can you help me? Can I talk to Mr.

president? )

√ x

Asking about the possibility of

the desired act happening

[consultation]

(e.g. Is it possible…, would you mind…,) x x

Asking whether the hearer is

willing to do or has an

objection to do

something[willingness]

(e.g. Will you…, would you(like)…, ) √ x

Expressing a wish that the

agent should do something

(e.g. I would like you to…,) x x


[want]

Expressing a need or desire for

goods [need]

(e.g. I want…, I need…,) x x

Stating that the hearer is under

the obligation to do something

[obligation]

(e.g. You must…, you have to…,) x x

Stating that it is appropriate

that the hearer performs the

desired action

(e.g. You should…, ) x x

Asking an idiomatic WH

questions

(e.g. What about…, how about…, why don’t

you…, why not…)

√

Hypothesis (e.g. If you would…, perhaps you would….) x x

Appreciation (e.g. I would be grateful if you would do…,

I would be glad if …)

x x

Permission quest (e.g. May I …, let me…) x x

Naming the object requested (e.g. The next slide please) x x

Checking the

availability[existence]

(e.g. Is Mr…there…) x x

Com

pla

inin

g

Valuation-an utterance

expressing the feelings of the

Speaker about either the

Addressee or the problem.

(e.g. e.g. 'It's really disgusting.') x x

Closing - An utterance made by

the Speaker to conclude the

complaint set.

(e.g. OK, thanks. ) x x

Threat- An utterance stating an

action the Speaker might take,

depending on the reaction of

the Addressee.

(e.g. e.g. "I, er..could take it higher than

just talking to you." )

x x

Remedy - An utterance calling

for some corrective action.

(e.g. 'This is going to have to stop.') x x

Justification of The Addressee

- An utterance giving a reason

or excuse for the Addressee's

having committed the wrong or

considering the effect on the

Addressee.

( e.g. 'Is this time particularly difficult for

you?" )

x x

Justification of the speaker-An

utterance explaining why the

Speaker is making the

complaint and the effects of the

wrong on the Speaker.

( e.g. "... because I... you're making me miss

lectures by turning up late." )

x x

Act Statement- An utterance

which states the problem

directly.

(e.g. "This is the fourth time this month

you've been really late!" )

x x


Orientation - An utterance

giving the Speaker's intent in

initiating the complaint, but

with no detail.

(e.g. 'I've been meaning to talk to you about

the rubbish you've been leaving outside.' )

x x

Opener- An utterance initiating

the speech act set but giving no

information about the wrong.

(e.g. "Listen, Jimmy." )

x x

Explicit complaint

(e.g. You’re not fair. You’re inconsiderate.

One should not postpone this type of

operation. I’ve been waiting here for nearly

an hour. You are always late. I expected

different treatment from a physician like

you.)

x x

Request for Explanation-

An utterance calling for an

explanation of the Addressee's

behavior,

(e.g. 'I mean, why do you do it?') x x

Blame -An utterance finding

fault with the Addressee or

holding him/her responsible for

the wrong,

(e.g. 'You realize 'cause you're late

again...')

x x

Adapted from Aijmer 1996; Ishihara and Cohen, 2007

Most lessons are insubstantial and that there are no matapragmatic explanations provided.

For example, we can see the following lesson presented in grade 10 students’ book under the

title ‘apologizing’.

“How would you say sorry to someone? Look at the expressions:

Sorry, I didn’t mean to…

I am sorry but…

I apologize for…

I hope you will forgive me but…

I seem to have made a mistake. I’m really sorry…

I am sorry for misunderstanding…

I hope you will understand…” (p. 62).

Another lesson that has to do with compliments as presented in 10th

English textbook on

pages 85 and 91, has got similar problem. For example,


‘Mercy is a good person’

‘You are good at Maths’ (p.85).

Tesfaw is so good at speaking English.

Tesfaw is such a good English speaker (p.91).

In the excerpt there is no clear instruction for the learners to further practice the language

feature and there is no explicit metalanguage or metapragmatic explanation is given.

Similarly, with the intention to say ‘no’ or refusal to requests for sex, the following

expressions are presented merely for the sake of presenting in 11th

grade English language

textbook. No metapragmatic explanation is provided. They are present only in name.

‘ I would really rather not…

If you don’t mind, I’ll say ‘no’ to that.

I don’t want…, if you don’t mind.

I’m sorry, but I’ve said ‘no’ and I’m not going to change my mind.

I’d prefer to…/I’d rather…

Why don’t we… instead?’ (p.103).

Likewise, a topic about ‘tourist complaint’ that is presented in grade 11th

textbook page 128,

must have left learners with unsolved puzzle. That is to say complaining being important

feature of pragmatics, ample matapragmatic explanations and scenarios must have been

provided. For the excerpt presented above no metalanguage and metapragmatic explanation

has been given. No authentic context for practice and use is provided. No scenarios or

situations were presented so that the learners will learn how the expressions are used in a

real life like simulations. The objective states ‘by the end of the lesson you will be able to

learn to apologize to someone’ however there are no practice activities to assess learners’

behavior.


Table 3.Frequency of Communicative Acts in Each Textbook

Type of Communicative

Acts

Grade 10 textbook

Grade 11 textbook

f

# o

f pag

es

Tota

l # o

f

pag

es

% o

f

pra

gm

atic

pag

es

f

# o

f pag

es

Tota

l # o

f

pag

es

% o

f

pra

gm

atic

pag

es

Request 74 17

327

9.5

48 9

251

6.4

Apology 13 5 3 1

Compliments 10 3 11 2

Complaints - - 1 1

Refusing 4 3 7 1

Thanking 4 3 2 2

Total 105 31 72 16

The above table represents the quantity of pragmatic information contained in the student

textbooks. In this case even phrase was counted so as to include the most possible data in the

process of enumeration. As one can see from the table above, only few pages have gone for

scantly explained and discussed pragmatic language features. Almost all pages or the lion’s

share have gone for grammar, vocabulary, passages, and other language skills. This is

somewhat paradox in that where the most important source of pragmatic aspect of language

is said to be textbook, particularly in EFL setting and where there is meager opportunities

for learners to develop their pragmatic competence, scantiness of such pragmatic contents in

the textbooks can highly debilitate learners’ communicative competence.

Table 4.Challenges related to students textbooks

According to literatures textbooks can be either opportunity or challenge to teaching

pragmatics in EFL context. What do St. Joseph school teachers think of textbooks’

pragmatic contents? Inadequate=1, fairly adequate=2 and adequate=3.

Statements

Teachers’ views about the pragmatic contents of their guide and

students’ textbooks:

Inad

equ

ate

Fai

rly

adeq

uat

e

Ad

equ

ate


a/explanation of pragmatic aspects of English

N 4 - -

Mean 1 - -

% 100 - -

b/activities that help learners learn to use language or

pragmatics N 2 4 -

Mean 1.5 1 -

% 50 50 -

c/how to teach pragmatic aspects of English language N 4 - -

Mean 1 - -

% 100 - -

d/how to test pragmatic aspect of English language N 4 - -

Mean 1 - -

% 100 - -

As shown in the table above, regarding the explanation of pragmatic aspects of English

language presented in textbooks or their guide, the teachers responded unanimously (100%

of them) that the contents are inadequate. Pertaining to the activities presented in the

students’ textbook to help learners learn to use language, 50% of the teachers contended

‘fairly adequate’ and the quarter part of them argued ‘inadequate’. While with regards to the

method of teaching and testing pragmatic aspect of language, all the respondents with one

voice said that the textbooks are ‘inadequate’.

Table 5.Why teachers do not teach pragmatic aspect of English language?

Statements

Ratings

Str

ongly

agre

e

Agre

e

Undec

ided

Dis

agre

e

Str

ongly

dis

agre

e

Lack of extra time N - 3 - 1 -

% - 75 - 25 -

Limited knowledge of target culture and

language

N 2 2 - - -

% 50 50 - - -

Confusion with which aspect of pragmatics to

cover

N 1 2 1 - -

% 25 50 25 - -

Lack of training N 2 1 1 - -

% 50 25 25 - -


Insufficient materials N 1 3 - - -

% 25 75 - - -

Students’ language level N 2 2 - - -

% 50 50 - - -

Teachers’ language level N 4 - - - -

% 100 - - - -

Type of language assessment N 1 2 1 - -

% 25 50 25 - -

As shown in the table above, the three most common challenges the teachers reported that

they are encountering in teaching pragmatics were lack of training as stipulated by Bardovi-

Harlig and Mahan-Taylor, (2003:1) ‘Pragmatics does not receive the attention in language

teacher education programs that other area of language do’, large class sizes and time

allotment. Students’ language level and insufficient materials are the next most frequent

difficulties for teachers to teach pragmatics. In a similar way, all subjects (100%)

commented that teacher’s language level could be a factor that influenced pragmatic

teaching. Finally, type of assessment, which in fact aimed at passing exam, has significant

impact up on the pragmatic lessons according to the teachers’ response. This is as Kasper

(2000), puts forward, ‘Unless teachers also know about methods to evaluate students'

progress in pragmatics, they may be reluctant to focus on pragmatics in their teaching.’

Table 6.General Perception of Teachers about Opportunities for Learning Pragmatics

in EFL Context

Statements

Agreement scales/raters

Str

ongly

agre

e

Agre

e

Undec

ided

Dis

agre

e

Str

ongly

dis

agre

e

Teacher’s talk in the classroom is

important…to help learners acquire pragmatic

knowledge

N - 3 - 1 -

% 75 - 25 -

The current English textbook discusses and

identifies pragmatic areas of the students’

needs…

N - - 1 3 1

% - - 25 75 25

Methods and techniques of teaching CL and

pragmatics are supposed to be different

N - - 1 2 1

% - - 25 50 25

Teaching pragmatic competence is not as N - - - 3 1


important as teaching communicative ability % - - - 75 25

Teachers rarely bring in outside materials

related to pragmatics

N - 4 - - -

% - 100 - - -

Learning and teaching pragmatics from

textbooks is impossible

N - 1 1 1 1

% - 25 25 25 25

Textbooks are inadequate in presenting

authentic pragmatic samples, but teachers can

overcome shortcomings of textbooks

N 1 3 - - -

% 25 75 - - -

Textbooks cannot be counted as reliable

resources of pragmatic input

N - 2 - 2 -

% 50 50

It is shown in the table above that the idea of teacher’s talk in the classroom to help learners

be aware of language pragmatics was accepted by 75% of the participant, while 25%

rejected it. Pertaining to the statement, ‘Methods and techniques of teaching CL and

pragmatics are supposed to be different’, 25% of the teachers are in dilemma, and 50% of

them, however ‘disagree’ and the remaining 25% ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement. In

reference to the item stated ‘Teaching pragmatic competence is not as important as teaching

communicative ability’, 75% of the participant teachers responded that they disagree with

the statement and the remaining 25% of them ‘strongly disagree’. With regards to the

statement ‘Teachers rarely bring in outside materials related to pragmatics’, the respondents

(100%) of them all together have witnessed they agree with the statement. What was

surprising to the researcher was that in table 7 the teachers responded that they include

pragmatic aspect of the English language in their daily lesson.

The sixth item aimed at eliciting teachers’ perception about the possibility of learning and

teaching pragmatics from the learners’ textbooks. 25% of them ‘strongly agreed, ‘agreed’,

‘undecided’, ‘disagree’ and ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement respectively.

Classroom Discourse Observation

Analysis of classroom discourse was difficult because the manifestation of pragmatic

features in the classroom discourse was far short of existence as there was paucity of

pragmatic elements in the students’ textbooks. The lesson consisted of mostly teacher

fronted activities and individual work. This might be caused by the presence of the

researcher that could be misunderstood by those teachers that were trying to show off their

English standing in front of the classroom all the way through 45’ minutes. During the


teacher-fronted activities, the teachers addressed the class as a whole almost exclusively.

When they addressed individual students, they did so in brief, using formulaic language

relating to the contents of the lesson i.e. grammar and reading passages. None of the

students asked a question during the presence of the researcher and they did not interact

much with each other except for brief comments which were not audible. The paucity of

interaction in English during non-teacher-fronted activities was somewhat common in the

classes observed by the researcher it was impossible to determine whether the students used

English with one another. This was because the researcher overheard some students

diverting to Amharic and talking some other business when he was sitting by some students

during classroom discourse observation.

These observation tools were constructed in such a way that the observer only had to tick or

cross from a list when something happened in the class, e.g. “teacher uses board” (√),

“students answer individual questions” (x). The researcher had followed the following

stages for doing observations. First, the researcher decided the particular types of activities

or behavior he wanted to observe. Second, prepared a checklist or a record form to complete

as he did his observation, or as soon as possible afterwards. Thirdly, the researcher talked

with the class teacher and got her/his permission; explained what he wanted to do and

negotiated what the teacher would get in return, e.g. some feedback on the lesson’s

effectiveness. Fourthly, he completed his observation and marked up his checklist, took

some time to reflect on the observations and finally, analyzed the result and came up with

the following results.

Table 7. Classroom Observation Results

Key: DCT =discourse completion test, ODCT=oral discourse completion test,

MDCT=multiple choice discourse completion test or WDCT=written discourse completion

test

Items category Subcategories Spotted Unspotted

Classroom Activities

1. drills √

2. translation √

3. discussion √

4. presentations √

5.conscious raising activities √

6.explicit instruction of pragmatics √

7.awareness-raising activities √


8.guided practice √

9. game √

10. role plays √

11. DCT, ODCT, MDCT or WDCT √

Participant

organization

1. teacher to students √

2. student to students or student to the

classroom

√

3.group work √

4. individual work √

Content or explicit

focus on language

1. form/grammar √

2. discourse √

3. usage √

4. use/function: complaining,

complimenting, refusing

√

Materials used 1. written √

2. audio √

3. visual √

4. stories √

5. dialogues √

6. scenarios/situations/authentic

language samples or models

√

Communicative

features

1. use of target language √

2. information gap √

3. sustained speech √

4. reaction to code or message √

5. incorporation of preceding utterances √

6. discourse initiation √

7. relative restriction of linguistic

form/semantic formula

√

Key: DCT-discourse completion test, MDCT-multiple choice discourse completion test,

WDCT-written discourse completion test.

Classroom discourse and textbook use were observed because the classroom is the ideal

place for teachers to help learners interpret language use. A classroom discussion of

pragmatics is also a good place to explore prior impressions of speakers (Bardovi-Harlig and

Mahan-Taylor, 2003:38).

The aim of observing the classroom activities was to spotlight on turn-taking behavior of

students and teachers, cross-cultural comparisons in the use of communicative acts,

treatment of learners’ pragmatic errors, the nature of linguistic input provided by the


teachers, style shifting in the classroom, direct or indirect influence of the teachers and

techniques that are used to address pragmatics in the classrooms.

As to the organization of the participants, the aim was to see whether the teacher working

with the whole class and/or individual students, whether the students were divided into

groups or were engaged in individual seat work, or if they were engaged in group work, how

was it organized etc. because as indicated in many literatures group work is considered to be

an important factor in the development of fluency skills and communicative skills.

Observation results revealed that students were typically involved in whole-class instruction

with rare interaction with their teacher or other students. Students were just watching or

listening to the teachers. The teachers typically focused on the content of the task or

assignment, responded to students' signals, communicated the task's procedures, and

checked students' work.

As it can be seen from the table, all of the teachers never use any scenarios or situations to

activate students’ pragmatic awareness by explaining the meaning of different language

functions or uses. Beside this they never use any role-play activities to observe students’

pragmatic competence or failure. This might be due to huge number of students that ranges

from 62 to 65 in a classroom. The researcher never observed the teachers asking their

students to collect pragmatics information from outside the classroom from TV, movies,

magazines, novels, etc. that are either naturally occurring or closer to authentic language

use. As far as the researcher’s classroom observation is concerned, no one of the teachers

happened to include pragmatic topics such as refusing, thanking, apologizing, complaining,

complimenting, in their lesson.

With reference to materials used, the aim was to make a note of authentic/unauthentic

materials that stimulate real-life communicative situations. Many advocates of the

communicative approach have claimed that authentic materials are essential in order to

prepare students for the kinds of discourse they will encounter outside the classroom.

Nevertheless, no teacher was found to use any additional materials to help learners with the

theme of lessons delivered, except textbook contents.


Although some teachers claimed in the questionnaire that the pragmatic lesson they brought

into the classroom from outside world was ‘fairly adequate’, no one of them found to have

included pragmatics related issues; rather they were heavily depending on the contents of the

textbooks all the way through while the researcher was observing their behavior in the

classroom. To further find out about the contradictions, the researcher talked to those

teachers informally after the classroom sessions as to why they were not bringing in outside

materials. They responded that there were no materials that they could make use of for the

same purposes and on the other hand they were bringing materials related to grammar and

vocabulary teaching.

Learners’ Self-perceived Communication Competence

The self-perceived communicative competence (SPCC) rubrics was developed to find out

about participants (students’) perception of their own competence in different

communication contexts and given different types of receivers. The scale was intended to let

the respondents define their own communication competence. Since people make decisions

with regard to communication (for example, whether they will even engage in it), it is their

own perception that is important, and not that of an outside observer. It is important that

readers of this measure recognize that this is not a measure of actual communication

competence; it is a measure of perceived competence. Knowledge of communication

strategies empowers individuals to communicate, express themselves, perform many

different functions, and attain satisfactory outcome. It was just to test learners’ beliefs with

respect to practicing English anytime anywhere so as to be able to use the language

effectively. It is believed that practice makes perfect in all aspects of language including

nonlinguistic features.

In order to solicit how learners perceive their communicative competence, the following

rubrics was designed and distributed to them before the discourse completion test was

administered. Some items were taken from 11th

grade English textbook (p. 42-43 and

88).The rubrics were made of five models of communicative competence along with

description: sociocultural competence, discourse competence, strategic competence,

grammatical competence, and pragmatic competence. The last one in fact took the lion’s

share for the main reason that the research’s theme revolved around it. The likert scale was


also part of the rubrics along with values attached to each description-strongly agree=5,

agree = 4 neither agree nor disagree=3, disagree=2, and strongly disagree=1. The mean

score were rounded to the nearest mathematical values.

Table 8.Learners’ Self-perceived Sociolinguistic Competence

Sociolinguistic Competence

Items Rating Values Total Mean

Score

5 4 3 2 1

1 Speaking English can help me interact

with native speakers.

f 64 75 15 19 10 183 3.86

% 34.9 40.9 8.2 10.4 5.5 100

2 Studying English is important because it

can help me make friends who speak

English.

f 55 48 44 20 16 183 3.51

% 30. 26.2 24. 10.9 8.7 100

3 Learning English is important because it

will broaden my world view.

f 89 60 25 8 1 183 4.23

% 48.6 32.8 13.7 4.4 .5 100

4 If I speak English well, I can travel

around the world without language

barriers.

f 31 54 60 30 7 183 3.

% 16.9 29.5 32.8 16.4 3.8 100

5 I want to do well in English because I

want to show my ability to my parents/

teachers/ friends.

f 35 40 45 52 11 183 3.17

% 19.1 21.9 24.6 28.4 6 100

6 I want to improve my English because

most of my friends speak English very

well.

f 18 32 50 51 32 183 2.71

% 9.8 17.5 27.3 27.8 17.5 100

7 I want to improve my English in order to

understand foreign cultures.

f 43 72 40 16 12 183 3.62

% 23.5 39.3 21.9 8.7 6.6 100

8 It is important to speak appropriate

English in different social contexts.

f 34 70 55 16 8 183 3.56

% 18.6 38.2 30 8.7 4.4 100

9 I think learning English will be more

effective if we have group discussion

with classmates during the class.

f 82 49 29 13 10 183 3.97

% 44.8 26.8 15.8 7.1 5.5 100

10 Whenever I have communication

breakdown in conversations with native

speakers, I will try to use verbal or non-

verbal messages to bridge the gap.

f 14 69 68 24 8 183 3.28

% 7.7 37.7 37.2 13 4.4 100

In relation to the first item, under the first criteria (sociolinguistic competence), 35% of the

subjects replied that they ‘strongly agree’, 41% of them claimed that they ‘agree’, 8.2% of

them were indifferent meaning they ‘neither agree nor disagree’, 10% of them responded


that they ‘disagree’ and the last 5.4% of them singled out the likert scale ‘ strongly

disagree’. The mean score of their response was 3.87=4 [agree].

Regarding the second statement “studying English is important because it can help me make

friends who speak English”, 30% of the subjects ‘strongly agreed’ with the statement, 26.2%

selected ‘agree’, 24% of them ‘neither agreed nor disagreed’ with the statement, 10.92%

‘disagreed’, and the remaining 8.74% opted for ‘strongly disagree’. Nevertheless, the grand

mean of their responses was 3.55; and when rounded off to the nearest value it means

‘agree’. In other words most of the respondents agreed with the statement.

Regarding the statement “If I speak English well, I can travel around the world without

language barriers”, 16.9% have a strong belief, 29.5% replied they ‘agree’, 32’8% of them

‘neither agreed nor disagreed’,16.4% of them opted for the scale ‘disagree’ and the

remaining 3.8%, have weak belief of the statement. The mean score for the responses was

3.37= (indifference).

For the statement “I want to improve my English in order to understand English speakers’

cultures” 23.5% of the participants replied they ‘strongly disagree”, 39.3% responded they

‘agree’, 21.9% of them claimed they ‘neither agree nor disagree’ and 6.6% of them pointed

out they ‘strongly disagree’ with the statement. In spite of this, the mean score of all likert

scales resulted in 3.62=4, which implied that majority have agreed with the statement.

The next statement was “I think different social contexts may require me using different but

appropriate English”. As noted in the table above, 19% of the subjects ‘strongly agreed’,

38.3% ‘agreed’, 30% reserved from having a say (meaning they neither agreed nor

disagreed), 8.7% disagreed and 4.3% of them ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement.

However, the grand mean of their response was 3.56=4(agree).

The next category was discourse competence. This item in fact was designed to see how

learners rate their ability to produce coherent idea in written or spoken English or to see the

extent to which learners perceived their discourse competence in using discourse markers to:

o Initiate discourse,

o Make a boundary in discourse (shift/partial shift in topic),


o Preface a response or a reaction,

o Fill a gap or dallying tactic,

o Hold the floor,

o Effect an interaction or sharing between the speaker and the hearer,

o Bracket the discourse either cataphorically or anaphorically,

o Make either foregrounded or backgrounded information.

Table 9. Learners’ Self-perceived Discourse Competence

Discourse Competence Tota

l Mean

Score

1 I usually practice many grammar drills in

order to improve my English.

f 49 61 50 16 7 183 3.5

% 26.8 33.3 27.3 8.7 3.8 100

2 I will ask myself to express my thoughts

in a comprehensive and correct manner

in English.

f 38 69 52 18 6 183 3.58

% 20.7 37.7 28.4 9.8 3 100

3 I perceive that I can express my ideas

naturally in spoken English.

f 27 65 50 28 13 183 3.33

% 14.8 35.5 27.3 15.3 7 100

4 I will try to talk to native speakers to

strengthen my spoken English.

f 47 64 36 25 11 183 3.59

% 25.6 34.9 19.7 13.7 6 100

5 I perceive that I feel more comfortable to

express my ideas in written English.

f 45 58 38 29 13 183 3.48

% 24.6 31.7 20.8 15.8 7 100

6 I will read different grammar books

written by different authors to improve

my grammatical competence.

f 37 57 39 28 22 183 3.29

% 20.2 31.1

4

21.3 15.3 12 100

7 Students are expected to be able to use

extended utterances where appropriate

f 48 62 38 26 9 183 3.59

% 26.2 33.9 20.8 14.2 4.9 100

8 Students need to have the ability to

maintain coherent flow of language over

several utterances

f 34 70 55 16 8 183 3.56

% 18.6 38.2 30 8.7 4.4 100

Under discourse competence, students reacted to statement, “I will ask myself to express my

thoughts in a comprehensive and correct manner in English” in different ways. For instance,

20.7% of the subjects claimed that they ‘strongly agree’, 37.7% showed that they ‘agree’,

28.4% of them pointed out they ‘neither agree nor disagree’ or they are in favor of no view,

9.8% o of them preferred ‘disagree’ and the last 3% contended they ‘strongly disagree’ with


the statement. The sum total of their mean 3.95=4(agree), that is the majority of the students

ask themselves to express their thoughts in a comprehensive and correct manner in English.

Students were also asked, under discourse competence item 3 to rate their self-perceived

competence as in the following statement. “I perceive that I can express my ideas naturally

in spoken English”. This was intended to solicit views of the subjects about their own flow

of idea when they try to speak in English. Accordingly, 14.75%, 35.5%, 27.3%, 15.3% and

7% of the subjects replied they ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘neither agree nor disagree’,

‘disagree’ and ‘strongly disagree’ respectively. The mean score showed that the majority of

the respondents ‘neither agree nor disagree’ with the statement. They were not sure as to

whether their language naturally flows when they write or speak or not.

Subsequent to the discourse competence, learners rated their self-perceived pragmatic

competence. Like in the other cases, students rated their self-perceived competence in

relation to the pragmatic competence as well. Their responses frequency and percentile as

well as the mean score were presented in the separate table below.

Table 9. Learners’ Self-perceived Pragmatic Competence

Pragmatic Competence

Total Mean

Score

1 I know what to say, when to say and how

to say and rule of talking when talking

with other people in English

f 24 60 64 17 18 183 3.23

% 13.1 32.7 34.9 9.2 9.8 100

2 I pay special attention when I make

requests

f 47 69 38 21 8 183 3.66

% 25.6 37.7 20.7 11.4 4.3 100

3 I pay special attention to other people

making requests

f 47 65 45 17 9 183 3.65

% 25.6 35.5 24.5 9.2 4.9 100

4 I pay special attention to other people

when I refuse

f 36 63 54 16 14 183 3.47

% 19.6 34.4 29.5 8.7 7.6 100

5 I pay attention to other people’s feeling,

status and age when I complain

f 52 67 44 14 6 183 3.78

% 28.4 36.6 24 7.6 3.2 100

6 I know when I should use modal verbs

such as can, could, would, or may when

apologizing, requesting, refusing,

thanking, inviting, suggesting ,etc.

f 60 71 34 8 10 183 3.86

% 32.8 38.7 18.5 4.3 5.4 100

7 I know taking turns in conversation f 44 77 44 11 7 183 3.75

% 24 42 24 6 3.8 100


8 I know how to do rephrasing when

misunderstood

f 27 68 59 20 9 183 3.42

% 14.8 37 32.2 10.9 4.9 100

9 I have the skill as to how to use verbal

and nonverbal signals

f 15 60 71 24 13 183 3.19

% 8 32.

7

38.

7

13.

1

7 100

10 I know how close to stand to someone

when speaking

f 39 65 49 18 12 183 3.53

% 21.3 35.5 26.7 9.8 6.5 100

11 I have the skills as to how to use facial

expressions and eye contact

f 35 74 47 16 11 183 3.55

% 19 40.4 25.6 8.7 6 100

12 I know the giving background

information to unfamiliar listener will

help

f 34 59 60 24 6 183 3.48

% 18.6 32.2 32.8 13.1 3.3 100

13 I know speaking in a classroom is

different from speaking on a playground

f 72 63 24 14 10 183 3.92

% 39.3 34.4 13.1 7.6 5.4 100

14 I know how to address and talk to people

whose age and status are different from

mine

f 58 64 32 16 13 183 3.73

% 31.6 34.9 17.4 8.7 7 100

Under the pragmatic competence, various questions (items) were posed to the subjects so as

to grasp the general pictures of their self-perceived competence. Language is not only a

means of teaching but it is a means of learning as well. Therefore, opportunities should be

given to students, particularly at the secondary schools levels, to relate school work to the

skills required in employment and adult life. Concerning this, a statement that was posed to

the subjects was ‘whether they are aware of what to say when and how to say; and whether

they think that they have sufficient knowledge about rules of turn taking when talking to

others in English.’ Then, 13.1% replied that they ‘strongly agree’, 32.7% responded that

they ‘ agree’ 34.9% of them contended they ‘neither agree nor disagree’, 9.2% of them

claimed that they ‘disagree’ and the rest 9.8% said that they ‘strongly disagree’ with the

statement. The mean score of their responses was 3.23, which means ‘the majority of the

respondents ‘neither agree nor disagree’ with the statement. This implies that they neither

know what to say, when to say, how to say nor rules of talking to other people in English.

In the second statement under pragmatic competence which goes “I pay special attention

when I make requests”, 25.6% of the subjects ‘strongly agreed’ that they pay special

attention when they make requests, while 37.7% preferred ‘agree’, 20.7% of them voted for


‘neither agree nor disagree’, 11.4% of them indicated that they ‘disagree’, and 4.3% of them

said that they ‘strongly disagree’ with the statement that was posed to see their awareness

about people’s social status, relation they have with me, power, age, etc. when they make

requests.

With respect to the statement “I pay special attention to other people’s requests”, those

participants who replied ‘strongly agree’ were about 25.6%, those who said ‘agree’ were

around 35.5%, those who replied ‘neither agree nor disagree’ accounted for 24.5%, while

9.2% of them selected ‘disagree’ and the 4.9% responded they ‘strongly disagree’ with the

statement. The mean score was 3.65 closer to likert scale ‘agree’.

“I pay special attention to other people’s status, age, sex, power, etc. when I refuse”, was

the fourth statement that was presented to the subjects. Consequently, 19.6% of them replied

‘strongly agree’ 34.4% of them ‘disagreed’ 29.5% of them said they ‘neither disagree nor

disagree’ whereas, 8.7% ‘disagreed’, and the remaining 7.6% of them selected ‘strongly

disagree’. The mean score was 3.47 which means ‘neither agree nor disagree’.

Concerning, the statement “I pay attention to other people’s feeling, status and age when I

complain”, 28.4 of the participants responded ‘strongly agree’ 36.6% of them ‘agreed’,

while 24% of them said ‘neither agree nor disagree’, 7.6% of them replied ‘disagree’ and the

rest 3.2% of them ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement. The mean score of their responses

was 3.78 which imply that the majority ‘neither agree nor disagree’ with the statement.

For some, milder example of impoliteness is that language speakers or EFL learners may not

understand the differences of how and when to use such modals as ‘can’ and ‘could’ versus

the conditional ‘would’; the latter of which carries a more imperative meaning than the two

modals in respect to making requests (Jung in Dash, 2010). In connection to this “I know

when I should use modal verbs such as can, could, would, or may when apologizing,

requesting, refusing, inviting, suggesting, etc.” was one of the statements forwarded to the

subjects. As a result, 32.78% of them said they ‘strongly agree’, 38.7% of them ‘agreed’,

18.5% of them ‘neither agreed nor disagreed’, 4.3% of them ‘disagreed’, and 5.4% of them

‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement. The score of their mean was 3.86.


The other item was “I know how to take turns in English conversations”. Related to this

statement, 24% of the of the respondents replied ‘strongly disagree’, 42% of them said they

‘agree’, 24% of them indicated they ‘neither agree nor disagree’, 6% of them claimed they

‘disagree’, and 3.8% of them ‘strongly disagreed’. The mean score is 2.76 which implied

disagreement.

The other statement presented to the subjects was “I know how to do rephrasing when

misunderstood in English”. Pertaining to this statement, 14.8% of them replied ‘strongly

agree’, 37% responded ‘agree’, 32.2% of them answered ‘neither agree nor disagree’, while

the rest 10.9% and 7% responded ‘disagree’ and ‘strongly disagree’ respectively. The mean

score was 3.42 which imply the majority of the respondents ‘neither agree nor disagree’ with

the statement.

Speech acts or communicative acts (Celce- Murcia, 2007) are also called social acts which

can be judged as appropriate and/or inappropriate according to specific and secrete rules of

communication in a given context, culture, or norm. These feature of language have also

linguistic formula that interlocutors are expected to use based on a particular norm, culture,

or general social context.

It is commonly believed that the goal of language learning is communication. The goal of

language teaching is therefore teaching students to communicate in the language they are

learning so that they can use it successfully to perform a variety of functions. Learning will

take place consciously if students perceive the need for it. That need or gap can be observed

from these data in relation to various language functions. In the majority of the cases,

participants rated those communicative acts (functions) such as invitations, refusal, requests,

apologies, commands, compliments, complaints, and giving advices-as difficult. If students

have only learned English to pass an examination, then the language they might have

acquired is probably transitional and focused on that need for the test.

As to why they have rated those communicative acts the way they have rated them,

participants have forwarded the following justifications. Note that the words of the

participants were typed exactly the way they were written down.

‘because of the English language very hard language’


‘Because some of them are not giving tention in our society so we don’t use them

frequently. That’s why!’

‘b/c of my experience that when I mate foreign speakers those actions are very difficult

to me’

‘sometime those kinds of action is faced when I go one step further in my life and those

makes me stressed to reply on English’

‘giving advice is more difficult to me b/c I don’t have much words to give advice or

I’m not naturally have more vocabulary’

‘Thanking someone is easy to me b/c I learnt starting from Grade 0 OR that is the

easiest word from all other things’

‘Because I didn’t got most of the chance to try them or practice them in real’

‘b/c it is so complicated’

‘because I amn’t speaking always’

‘because I don’t speak them frequntly’

‘I may be run out of vocabulary for complaints.’

‘b/c it need high skill in speaking’

‘except refuzing most actions are not hard to do’

‘actually, All of them are not much difficult for me’

‘because English is not mother tang language of mine and I’m not native for English’

‘because when I say Apologies I feel that I make my self Inferior but if I Invite some

one I am happy with that’

‘I must be polite so it is difficult for me to talk using polite words’

‘b/c I feel it is difficult’

‘it is difficult b/c you don’t know which is difficult to people what it is easy for you to

say things by your own- you think that it may make them fell bad’

‘for me giving advise is most difficult if it’s personal and thanking is not difficult for

me’

‘b/c the expression that I indicate as a least difficult are more familiar for me and I used

them always the most difficult one are not familiar for me’


Because sometimes I forget some words I don’t have enough vocabularies to express

my feelings’

‘b/c those are the difficulties that I get when I speak English with others’

‘because I use them rarely and some of them frequntly’

‘I just said that because those things are even hard in Amharic.’

‘b/c of that I knew that from my life cycle for example I have difficult situation in

complaints’

‘b/c the words are not usually used in social or in other places that is why’ - thank you’

‘b/c they need more explanation and experience on it’

‘b/c things are difficult when we talk in English’

‘b/c I have no enough vocabulary to express my feeling’

‘because I have less developed English speaking ability so I can’t talk to much

English’

‘thanking someone is the easiest thing b/c thanking people for their help is the right

thing’

‘b/c I didn’t practice such kind of things before and the light ones are the things I

practice most times and see on films’

In spite of the fact that these statements are ungrammatical, there are some facts as one reads

all the way through the statements. In connection to this, Amlaku (2010) argues ‘English in

Ethiopia is a medium of instruction from secondary school through higher education but the

learners’ proficiency remains always poor and the effectiveness of English language

teaching remains always questionable, despite the efforts being undertaken by the Ethiopian

government and concerned institutions’ (p.10).

Students affirmed that the English language itself is difficult for them. There are no such

language aspects as requesting, complaining, compliment, apologizing, etc. in their day to

day social language practices. Using these pragmatic aspects demanded them of some sort of

efforts. Students were not familiar with those language aspects, and those aspects of

language did not receive enough attention in the learning and teaching process. However,

Cenoz, (2007:7) in other section has argued that being central to language use, and language

learning, pragmatic issues must be addressed in language classroom, because English is


mainly used in the classroom and EFL learners thus have significantly fewer opportunities to

engage in English based communications outside the classroom. Therefore, English

classroom becomes the central site for their development of pragmatic competence.

MDCT Scores and Descriptions

There are six types of methods for pragmatic knowledge assessment that so far have been

identified by researchers according to Jianda, (2006), i.e., the Written Discourse Completion

Tasks (WDCT), Multiple-Choice Discourse Completion Tasks (MDCT), Oral Discourse

Completion Tasks (ODCT), Discourse Role Play Talks (DRPT), Discourse Self-

Assessment Talks (DSAT) and Role-Play self-assessments (RPSA).

DCTs are used to elicit data by giving speakers scenarios that describe a situation and

having speakers write down or role-play what they would say in that situation (Ishihara and

Cohen, 2010). The MDCTs used for this study consisted of 20 situations with their

respective choices in which learners have to choose socially acceptable language with an

ideal interlocutor. The situations varied based on the relative power of the two people

(interlocutors), their social distance, and the degree of imposition created by the intent

(action). The DCT was chosen as the data elicitation tool because it was the most expedient

way to collect the relatively large amount of data. There were three to four months between

the pre- and posttest. The pretest format was WDCT.

All the students who took part in the research were given a sociolinguistic test. This test was

devised to measure degrees of politeness, formality, appropriateness, and register variation

in the spoken mode. For each item, a sociocultural context was provided, and the

participants needed to choose from a list of four or five alternatives the most appropriate

way to respond to that particular situation representing the appropriate use of language based

on the NS perspective and the remaining options were distracters. The scoring for this test

was based on native-speaker responses to the items. A sample question is as follows:

You are having dinner with your friend's family. The food that your friend's mother has

prepared is delicious, and you want some more. You've decided to say something in order to

get some more. Which of the following, do you think, is the most appropriate?

A."You are a great cook."


B."Please give me more food."

C."This food sure is delicious."

D."Could I have some more?"

Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative data were involved. The quantitative data were

collected through MDCT; while the qualitative data were obtained through the analysis of

the responses of MDCT.

In order to eliminate the pretest effect on the test results, the test format was changed from

open ended to multiple choice and the tests were administered to all learners at the same

time and collected back in the same time. The time allotted for the test was 35 minutes.

Respondents did it independently without discussion with their classmates and they were

encouraged to ask any questions if they were not clear with the vocabulary or expression.

After the participants submitted the questionnaire, the researcher checked the answers to

avoid any unchecked or not unanswered responses. If it did happen, the students would be

required to complete them again.

The scores were tabulated and tallied and finally calculated so as to interpret them. Mean

and percentile for the correct answer and other distracters were calculated in the following

table. Immediately after the participants finished doing the test, there was a section of the

question paper that required them to indicate what was/were the sources of their current

pragmatic knowledge. Personal relationships between the interlocutors, their level of

imposing rank, their power, specifically their age, gender, and social distance between

interlocutors were point of pragmatic parameters when designing the MDCT.

Table 10. MDCT Score Description

Options for MDCT

Scenarios A B C D E F Total

Situation 1

f 96 28 26 25 8 183

Mean .52 0.15 .14 .136 .04 .98

% 52 15 14 13.3 4 100

Situation 2 f 9 30 31 105 8 183

Mean .05 .163 .169 .57 .04 .99


% 5 16.3 16.9 57 4 100

Situation 3 f 85 14 61 13 10 183

Mean .46 .08 .33 .07 .05 .99

% 46 8 33 7 5 100

Situation 4

f 12 54 86 16 9 6 183

Mean .07 .29 .46 .08 .049 .03 .95

% 7 29 46 8 4.9 100

Situation 5 f 64 82 12 14 10 183

Mean .34 .44 .065 .076 .05 .97

% 34 44 6.5 7.6 5 100

Situation 6

f 90 53 15 13 12 183

Mean .49 .28 .08 .07 .065 .98

% 49 28 8 7 6.5 100

Situation 7 f 138 13 12 8 11 183

Mean .75 .07 .065 .043 .06 .98

% 75 7 6.5 4.3 6 100

Situation 8

f 13 21 130 19 - - 183 Mean .07 0.114 .71 .103 - - .99

% 7 11.4 71 10.3 - - 100

Situation 9 f 9 116 18 27 11 - 183

Mean .049 .633 .098 .147 .06 - .97

% 4.9 63.3 9.8 14.7 6 - 100

Situation 10

f 30 40 27 73 13 - 183

Mean .163 .218 .147 .398 .07 - .99

% 16.3 21.8 14.7 39.8 7 - 100

Situation 11

f 32 31 26 86 8 - 183 Mean .174 .169 .142 .469 .043 - .99

% 17.4 16.9 14.2 46.9 4.3 - 100

Situation 12

f 12 32 68 40 27 4 183

Mean .065 .174 .371 .218 .147 .021 .99

% 6.5 17.4 37.2 21.8 14.7 2.1 100

Situation 13

f 24 30 65 43 21 - 183

Mean .131 .163 .355 .234 .114 - .99

% 13.1 16.3 35.5 23.4 11.4 - 100

Situation 14 f 7 15 123 22 16 - 183 Mean .038 .08 .672 .12 .087 - .98

% 3.8 8 67.2 12 8.7 - 100

Situation 15

f 25 98 21 26 13 - 183

Mean .136 .535 .114 .142 .07 - .98

% 13.6 53.5 11.4 14.2 7 - 100

Situation 16

f 24 41 33 66 19 - 183

Mean .13 .224 .18 .36 .103 - .99

% 13 22.4 18 36 10.3 - 100

Situation 17 f 9 21 132 21 - - 183


With reference to the first situation, 52% of the examinees selected the correct answer (A).

The remaining sum total of them i.e. 48% were distracted. The implication is that their

pragmatic awareness is questionable. The deviation from the mean score is 0.042. Relating

to the second question, 43% of the examinees were distracted from the right or correct

answer while the remaining 57% of them have chosen the correct answer (D). The deviation

from the mean score is 0.045. With regards to the third scenario, the subjects accounting for

about 33% selected the right answer (C), and the rest 67% were misled by other distracters.

The deviation from the mean score is 0.042. Pertaining to the fourth situation, 46% of the

participants have chosen the correct option. The remaining sum total of them i.e. 54% were

distracted by the other options.

Table 11. The MDCT score of the students by group

Scores Frequency % Mean

1-5 48 26.2 .26

6-10 69 37.8 .37

11-15 53 28.9 .27

16-20 13 7.1 .071

Total 183 100 .99

As it can be seen from the data presented above, the majority of the participants scored

between 6 and 10 (37.8%). The average scorers were still not negligible that constitute for

28.9% scoring points between 11-15 out of 20 points. The top scorers were between16-20

accounting for 7.1% as compared to the other ones. This indicated that the majority of the

participants did not have sort of awareness about pragmatics and pragmatic test. This might

Mean .049 .114 .72 .114 - - .98

% 49 11.4 72 11.4 - - 100

Situation 18

f 25 29 41 88 - - 183

Mean .136 .158 .224 .48 - - .98

% 13.6 15.8 22.4 4.8 - - 100

Situation 19

f 29 20 34 100 - - 183 Mean .158 .109 .185 .546 - - .97

% 15.8 10.9 18.5 54.6 - - 100

Situation 20

f 118 14 20 31 - - 183

Mean .644 .076 .109 .169 - - .97

% 64.4 7.6 10.9 16.9 - - 100


be the case that their grammar knowledge must have helped them than their pragmatic

knowledge.

Summary of Research Results

The research findings showed that based on the inventory made pertaining to the presence

and absence of the pragmatic features in the students’ textbooks, there is a dearth of

language use contents in the plethora of other linguistic features that almost constituted

above 90% of the textbooks contents. It was also evident from the data analysis that the

pragmatic elements that were only given a lip service were given insufficient metapragmatic

and metalanguage explanations. Hence, it is one of the challenges to teaching pragmatics in

Ethiopian EFL context.

The other research result was that teachers did not bring in outside materials to complement

the paucity of pragmatic contents of the English language textbooks so as to facilitate the

opportunities for teaching and learning pragmatics in the classroom. Evidence for this is

where 100% of the teachers responded unanimously that no teacher could be singled out for

bringing in outside materials to instruct pragmatics in EFL setting where there are rare

opportunities to learning pragmatics.

Further research result was that the majority of the participant students scaled that most of

the communicative acts or social functions that they were tested for are difficult. As a result

of which most of them scored below average in MDCT.

The classroom observation results were also consistent with what was detected from the

textbooks inventory, teachers’ responses and that of students’ responses that there were no

lessons or interactions directed to the development of pragmatic competence in the

classrooms.

Conclusions

In the modern communication and communication oriented terminology we are interested in

the process of providing language and its procedures, not just in the end-product, rather

language use. ‘Pragmatics is needed if we want fuller, deeper and generally more reasonable

account of human language behavior’ (Mey, 2001). Furthermore, outside of pragmatics, no


understanding; sometimes, a pragmatic account is the only language use that makes sense

(ibid). Further magnifying the essentiality of pragmatics and pragmatic competence lesson

some pronounce ‘Pragmatic competence is not a piece of knowledge additional to the

learners’ existing grammatical knowledge, but is an organic part of the learners’

communicative competence’ (Kasper as qtd in Edwards and Csizer, 2004). With the

growing demand to communicate in a foreign language, both the teacher education and

language teaching process require specific attention not only to form and meaning but also

to the pragmatic features of a language as pragmatic competence is one of the most

important component of communicative competence.

Hence, based on the findings of this research the following conclusions were drawn:

The current English textbooks for Ethiopian upper high schools, i.e. grade 10 and 11 are

containing only meager features of pragmatics. By implication they are challenges to

teaching socially acceptable language or pragmatics to students. Being the most important

source of developing communicative competence, they do not cooperate with learners to

help them develop pragmatics. The findings indicated that there is a scarcity of pragmatic

information contained in the English for Ethiopia, and the variety of pragmatic information

is limited. Most of the metalanguage explanations are very shallow and there are no

metapragmatic explanations at all.

It is fairly possible to infer from the teachers’ response that well-designed teacher training

and teaching materials should be in place for teachers to develop students’ pragmatic

competence. Moreover, the teaching hours to cover the issue of pragmatics; thus, to properly

manage each lesson may solve the current problem of teaching pragmatics in the classroom.

The results of this study also showed that teachers seldom use pragmatic instruction in

classrooms, and mostly students have to spend time by themselves developing pragmatic

competence without explicit instruction. Overall, the pragmatics instruction is immature

and needs to be developed, and teachers need professional training to know how to teach

pragmatics effectively.


Although the learners’ self-perceived competence mean score was high, their MDCT result

was low; and this confirmed that self-perceived competence and the actual performance

never match. This is why according to Dewaele (2011) higher levels of self-perceived

competence are linked to lower levels of communication which in fact has to be further

investigated in our own context.

In the end, the findings of this study provided information about the current state of

pragmatic instruction, challenges of teaching pragmatics in real classrooms, and teachers’

awareness of teaching pragmatics.

Recommendations

There is no doubt that effective teaching in Ethiopian EFL classrooms can improve students’

pragmatic knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary for the textbook writers to write user

friendly textbooks in terms of providing pragmatic information to both the teachers and

students. The researcher has a strong belief that future EFL textbook would include immense

presentation of a variety of linguistic forms along with explicit metapragmatic explanations

and contextually rich and authentic opportunities for students to practice those forms.

More importantly, there is a high expectation for aspiring teachers’ trainers and textbook

writers to improve their own knowledge of pragmatics and pedagogy for optimal students

learning outcomes. Teachers also should be able to receive sufficient knowledge in the area

of pragmatics while they are on job or taking undergraduate courses.

Implications for future research

The findings of this study have implication for classroom teaching, future research, and

curriculum design.


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