A case study on EFL teachers’ views on material adaptation for teaching pragmatics


Karatepe Ç., Civelek M.

RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, vol.7, no.23, pp.2-22, 2021 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)

Abstract

The teaching of pragmatic features in the field of ELT has received more attention recently. These studies indicated that English textbooks fail to represent the features of pragmatics. Yet, textbooks are a valuable source of information for students, so teachers need to enrich the textbook activities to teach pragmatics. However, to what extent teachers can do this has not been investigated.  Numerous exercises have been suggested in the field to enhance the pragmatic competence of EFL learners. On investigation, no studies were found investigating the views of EFL teachers on such exercises for pragmatics instruction. To fill in this gap, a dialogue activity aiming to teach requests was first modified by reviewing the literature. Then, the views of EFL teachers on the modified activity were investigated through a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The study also aimed to find if teachers were willing to adapt textbook activities for more effective pragmatics instruction. The participants were 100 Turkish EFL teachers. The results indicated that teachers found the modifications useful for better pragmatics instruction. Furthermore, no statistically significant difference was found between those who had taken a course on pragmatics during their teacher training and the ones who had not. It was found that teachers regarded material adaptation for the instruction of pragmatics as a must. Even so, they admitted that none of them had made such adaptations as they thought they were not equipped with a satisfying level of knowledge on pragmatics.