A Study On Pragmatic Input Available For Learners

Pragmatic acquisition is an important part in second language or foreign language acquisition.Learners must maintain a good grasp of pragmatic knowledge in terms of target language in orderto fully master the target language and use it in a right way. Kasper and Dahl (1991) definedinterlanguage pragmatics as referring to nonnative speakers’ comprehension and production ofpragmatics and how that target language related knowledge is acquired. According to Kasper andRose (2002), there are many factors that can influence the learners’ interlanguage pragmaticacquisition: availability of input, the effect of instruction, L2proficiency level, length of stay intarget culture, learning context, transfer, individual factors. Among the seven factors, availabilityof input will be investigated in this thesis.Based on researches of interlanguage pragmatic acquisition, pragmatic input and speech actsof request, one source of learners’ pragmatic input——textbooks were investigated on the aspectof requests in this thesis. The primary goal of this thesis is to study whether textbooks could be anavailable source of pragmatic input for the learners. In order to make a specific research, NewHorizon College English: Listening and Speaking textbooks were investigated in this thesis. Thereare three research questions:1) How do the learners’ textbooks show requests in the aspects ofalerters, supportive moves, strategies, perspectives and internal modifications;2) What are thesimilarities and differences between the requests in the textbooks and the requests performed bythe native speakers;3) What are the similarities and differences between the requests in thetextbooks and the requests performed by the learners.128learners from Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan University of Science andTechnology and Shanxi University of Finance and Economics and five native speakers from NorthUniversity of China were selected as the subjects. The requests performed by the native speakersand learners were collected by questionnaires, besides, the requests in New Horizon CollegeEnglish: Listening and Speaking textbooks were collected. Then with the help of SPSS17.0software, the descriptive statistics and independent T-test were conducted. The requests performedin the textbooks were investigated, requests in the textbooks and performed by the native speakerswere compared, as well as requests in the textbooks and performed by the learners.The major findings are summarized as follows: 1) The requests in the textbooks don’t include all the types of alerters, supportive moves,perspectives, strategies and internal modifications.2) The requests in the textbooks and the requests performed by the native speakers coverdifferent types of alerters, supportive moves, strategies, perspectives and internal modifications,and the percentages of them in the textbooks and the questionnaires of native speakers aredifferent. However, the differences of general distributions of the two groups are not significantbecause the sig.(2-tailed) is0.906. Besides, the native speakers’ expressions of request are morevarious than those in the textbooks.3) The requests in the textbooks and the requests performed by the learners cover differenttypes of alerters, supportive moves, strategies, perspectives and internal modifications, too.Besides, the percentages of them in the textbooks and the questionnaires of learners are different.However, the differences of general distributions of the two groups are not significant because thesig.(2-tailed) is0.896. Finally, the learners’ expressions of request are more various than those inthe textbooks.