A Study On Speech Acts In Listening And Speaking Parts Of PEP Senior High School English Textbooks (2019)

Pragmatic competence has become a significant goal of language teaching.The National English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2020)also proposes that acquiring and mastering certain pragmatic knowledge is conducive to improving students’ pragmatic competence.Speech acts are the vitally important embodiment of pragmatic knowledge.It is imperative to delve into textbooks because textbooks are the main way to present speech acts and cultivate learners’ pragmatic competence.Based on the speech act theory,this study selects the compulsory textbooks of PEP Senior High School English Textbooks(2019)as the research object,adopts the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods and explores the characteristics of speech acts in the listening and speaking parts of the selected textbooks,in order to evaluate the textbook and put forward suggestions for improving it.Therefore,this study aims to answer the following two research questions.1.What are the characteristics of the speech acts in the listening and speaking parts of the textbook?2.What problems can be found in the listening and speaking parts of the textbook in terms of speech acts?The selected textbooks present the following characteristics:(1)A diversity of speech acts can be found in three compulsory textbooks.(2)“Giving information”accounts for the highest frequency while “reminding” and “accepting suggestions”have the lowest frequency.(3)The arrangement of speech acts is deliberately designed according to the degree of importance and the functions of some speech acts are not limited by specific contexts.Besides,two problems are found in the textbooks:(1)Some speech acts do not appear in the textbooks.(2)Direct speech acts,indirect speech acts and five categories of speech acts involved are unevenly distributed in each textbook.Finally,in accordance with the characteristics of speech acts,this paper makes several suggestions for textbook designers,teachers and students.The designers should not only reasonably design activities of speech acts in each part of the textbook but also add the necessary and scarce speech acts.Besides,teachers should delve into newly published textbooks,explore pragmatic knowledge such as speech acts in textbooks,and selectively teach according to actual conditions.Students also should consciously cultivate their pragmatic awareness,take the initiative to acquire pragmatic knowledge and consciously use appropriate speech acts in daily communication.