Structured debates in professional English classes: realization of speech acts and modification of the power of speech information technology students
Vol.12,No.2(2022)
Information technology (IT) students are a specific discourse community whose oral communication in English for specific purposes (ESP) predominates at all levels of their university studies and future workplace activities in the multinational IT sector. Since IT students’ pragmatic competence in performing communicative functions is essential for their effective communication in an academic setting and a global work environment, it is important to investigate this aspect of their language systematically and carefully. Accordingly, this paper deals with IT students’ speech acts and modification of the illocutionary force while participating in structured in-class debates on controversial issues related to their field of study. Since structured debates are based on learners’ spontaneous communication and immediate responses, they seem to be a suitable instrument for eliciting samples of learner language. Speech acts, boosters and hedges were analysed manually and through the corpus-based analysis of transcribed debates in Sketch Engine. The analysis revealed that students used a wide range of speech acts and different boosters and hedges for both increasing and reducing the illocutionary force. Besides, the ways IT students used boosters and hedges reflect how they assume and share their professional knowledge and experience in their discourse community.
in-class debates, ESP learners, pragmatic competence, speech acts, illocutionary force, boosters, hedges
Eva Ellederová
Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Brno University of Technology, Technická 10, Brno 616 00, Czech Republic
Eva Ellederová received her Ph.D. in foreign language pedagogy from Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic. She graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University with a degree in English Language and Literature, but her first degree in Process Engineering was earned from Brno University of Technology. She teaches English for information technology, business English, and practical English courses at Brno University of Technology. She published several coursebooks including English for Information Technology which was designed as an outcome of her design-based research. Apart from several journal articles, she is the author of the monograph Konstrukční výzkum učebnice pro výuku odborného anglického jazyka. Currently, she focuses on the analysis of information technology students’ spoken language.
AIJMER, K. (2002). English discourse particles. Evidence from a corpus. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
AIJMER, K. (2013). Understanding pragmatic markers. A variational pragmatic approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
AL-GAHTANI, S., & ROEVER, C. (2015). The development of requests by L2 learners of modern standard Arabic: A longitudinal and cross-sectional study. Foreign Language Annals, 48(4), 570–583.
AL-ROUD, A. A. (2016). Problems of English speaking skill that university students encounter from their perspectives. British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science, 18(3), 1–9.
BACH, K., & HARNISH, R. M. (1979). Linguistic communication and speech acts. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
BARDOVI-HARLIG, K. (1996). Pragmatics and language teaching: Bringing pragmatics and pedagogy together. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and language learning (s. 21–39). Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
BEEBE, L., TAKAHASHI, T., & ULISS-WELTZ, R. (1990). Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. In R. C. Scarcella, E. Andersen, & S. D. Krashen (Eds.), Developing communicative competence in a second language (s. 55–73). New York: Newbury House.
BEECHING, K. (2016). Pragmatic markers in British English. Meaning in social interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
BERGMAN, M. L., & KASPER, G. (1993). Perception and performance in native and non-native apology. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (s. 82–107). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
BROWN, R. (1991). Group work, task difference, and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 21(1), 1–12.
BROWN, P., & LEVINSON, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
BYGATE, M. (1987). Speaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
COLBERT, K., & BIGGERS, T. (1985). Why should we support debate? Journal of the American Forensic Association, 21, 237–240.
CROSLING, G. & WARD, I. (2002). Oral communication: The workplace needs and uses of business graduate employees. English for Specific Purposes, 21, 41–57. DARLING, A., & DANNELS, D. (2003). Practising engineers talk about the importance of talk: A report on the role of oral communication in the workplace. Communication Education, 52(1), 1–16.
DUFF, P. (1986). Another look at interlanguage talk: Taking tasks to task. In Day, R. (Ed.), “Talking to learn”: Conversation in second language acquisition (s. 147–181). Rowley: Newbury House.
ELLIS, R., & BARKHUIZEN, G. (2005). Analysing learner language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
EL MAJIDI, A., DE GRAAFF, R., & JANSSEN, D. (2018). Students’ perceived effect of in-class debates in second language learning. European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL, 7(1), 35–56.
FREELEY, A. J., & STEINBERG, D. L. (2009). Argumentation and debate. Critical thinking for reasoned decision making. Boston: Cengage Learning, Inc.
FUKUSHIMA, S. (1991). Offers and requests: Performance by Japanese learners of English. World Englishes, 9(3), 317–325.
GINGANOTTO, L. (2019). Debate as a teaching strategy for language learning. Lingue e Linguaggi 30, 107–125
GOH, C. C. M., & BURNS, A. (2012). Teaching speaking: A holistic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
HARVEY, K., & ADOLPHS, S. (2012). Discourse and healthcare. In J. P. Gee & M. Handford (eds.), The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis (s. 470–481). London: Routledge.
HINKEL, E. (2002) Second language writers’ text. Linguistic and rhetorical features. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. HOLMES, J. (1984). Modifying illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 8(3), 345-365.
HOLMES, J. (1986). Functions of you know in women’s and men’s speech. Language in Society, 15, l–22. HOLMES, J. (1990). Hedges and boosters in women’s and men’s speech. Language & Communication, 10(3), 185–205.
HOSSAIN, J. (2013). ESP needs analysis for engineering students: a learner-centered approach. Journal of Presidency University, 2(2), 16–26
HOUSE, J. (1988). “Oh excuse me please . . .”: Apologizing in a foreign language. In B. Kettemann, P. Bierbaumer, A. Fill, & A. Karpf (Eds.), Englisch ah Zweitsprache (s. 303–327). Tubingen: Narr.
HYLAND, K. (1998a). Boosting, hedging and the negotiation of academic knowledge. Texts, 18(3), 349–382.
HYLAND, K. (1998b). Hedging in scientific research articles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
HYLAND, K. (2005). Metadiscourse. Exploring interaction in writing. New York: Continuum.
ISTIFÇI, I. (2009). The use of apologies by EFL learners. English Language Learning, 2(3), 15–25.
JIANG, X. (2006). Suggestions: What should ESL students know? System, 34, 36–54.
JINDATHAI, S. (2015). Factors affecting English speaking problems among engineering students at Thai-Nichi Institute of Technology. TNI Journal of Business Administration and Languages, 3(2), 1–6.
KASPER, G. (1996). Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(2), 149–169.
LAROCHE, L. (2003). Managing cultural diversity in technical professions. New York: Butterworth Heinemann.
LEE, J. H. (2017). Speech in direction-giving interactions in L2 English. Korean Journal of Applied Linguistics, 33(2), 51–80.
LONG, M. (2014). Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
MAGAUINA, G. M., TULEGENOVA, M. K., & AHMADIEVA, A. T. (2017). Some features of reading and speaking skills development of students in technical university at the process of teaching foreign languages. Актуальные проблемы гуманитарных и естественных наук, 3–4, 10–13.
MYERS, G. (1989). The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics, 10, 1–35.
MYLES, J. (2009). Oral competency of ESL technical students in workplace internships. The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language, 13(1), 1–24.
PEKAREK DOEHLER, S., & POCHON-BERGER, E. (2011). Developing ‘methods’ for interaction: A cross-sectional study of disagreement sequences in French L2. In J. K. Hall, J. Hellerman, & S. Pekarek Doehler (Eds.), L2 interactional competence and development (s. 206–243). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
SARUDIN, I. H., ZUBAIRI, A., M., & ALI, A. M. (2009). A comparative analysis of engineering students’ problems in speaking ad writing. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Teaching and Learning, 1–8.
SEARLE, J. R. (1975). A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In K. Gunderson (Ed.), Language, mind and knowledge (s. 344–369). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
SEARLE, J., & VANDERVEKEN, D. (1985). Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SKEHAN, P., & FOSTER, P. (2007). Complexity, accuracy, fluency, and lexis in task-based performance: A meta-analysis of the Ealing research. In S. Van Daele, A. Housen, F. Kuiken, M. Pierrard, & I. SYAMDIANITA & MAHARIA, A. C. (2019). Developing speaking skill through debating: Undergraduate EFL students’ perception. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 432, 22–26.
TAGUCHI, N. (2019). Second language acquisition and pragmatics. An overview. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and pragmatics (s. 1–14). Abingdon: Routledge.
THORNBURY, S. (2005). How to teach speaking. Harlow: Longman.
URBANOVÁ, L. (1996). Modification of the illocutionary force. Brno Studies in English, 22, 63–69.
URBANOVÁ, L. (2003). On expressing meaning in English conversation: semantic indeterminacy. Brno: Masarykova univerzita.
VAN EEMEREN, F. H., & GROOTENDORST, R. (1984). Speech acts in argumentative discussions. A theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion. Dordrecht: Foris Publications Holland.
VAN EEMEREN, F. H., & GROOTENDORST, R. (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation. The pragma-dialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
VAN EEMEREN, F. H., HOUTLOSSER, P., & SNOECK HENKEMANS, A. F. (2007). Argumentative indicators in discourse. A pragma-dialectical study. Dordrecht: Springer.
WEIZMAN, E. (1993). Interlanguage requestive hints. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (s. 123–137). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
WIERZBICKA, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics. The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
ZARE, P., & OTHMAN, M. (2013). Classroom debate as a systematic teaching/learning approach. World Applied Sciences Journal, 28(11), 1506–1513.
Copyright © 2023 Eva Ellederová