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ELT Journal 2004 58(1):38-49; doi:10.1093/elt/58.1.38
© 2004 by Oxford University Press
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Evaluating pragmatics-focused materials

Elizabeth Crandall1 and Helen Basturkmen2

1 The University of Auckland, New Zealand.Email: lisa_crandall{at}hotmail.com 2 The University of Auckland, New Zealand. Email: h.basturkmen{at}auckland.ac.nz

Learners often find the area of pragmatics (that is, using speech acts such as requesting, inviting, and complimenting) problematic. Teachers are urged to teach pragmatic aspects of language, and make use of authentic samples of spoken discourse to do so. However, information about the effectiveness of pragmatics-focused instruction of this nature has been lacking. This paper describes how we evaluated a set of instructional materials targeting the speech act of requests. The materials aimed to raise learners’ awareness of native-speaker norms of requesting in an academic environment. They employed a ‘guided discovery’ approach in which the learners analysed samples of authentic spoken language. The findings of our evaluation showed that the learners found this experience positive. After instruction, their perceptions of the appropriateness of requests matched those of native speakers more closely than they did prior to instruction. These findings have implications for the development of pragmatics-focused materials.

Received October 2002.


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