“Are the English textbooks too unnatural?”: An Analysis of Speech Acts in ELT Textbooks within Three-Tier Education in Thai Non-formal Education

Abstract

In the field of language teaching and learning, pragmatic competence is believed to be a key component for developing communicative competence in EFL learners. Many studies found that the content of English textbooks lack of exposure to pragmatic materials. Furthermore, while pragmatic competence in EFL textbooks has been widely explored in a variety of international contexts, there is a limited study in the Thai context. The present study aims to fill this gap by investigating the representation of speech acts, which carries the ability to enhance pragmatic competence, in the three-tier education of ELT (English Learning Textbook) textbooks in Thai non-formal education. To attain this goal, Searle's (1976) speech act theory, as the framework of data analysis, is adopted to examine the types of speech acts in dialogue activities in the three textbooks. The study also utilizes frequency analysis in regard to the frequency of emerging speech acts as well as potential indications derived from both high and low frequencies. Overall, the three chosen ELT textbooks demonstrate limited and uneven representation of the speech act, reflecting significant gaps in pragmatic content. Only three types of speech acts, such as representatives, directives, and expressives dominate the textbooks, while commissives and declarations are deficient. The indications, based on the frequency results, are that, first, it is resulted from a variety of curriculum objectives designated for each textbook in different Thai non-formal educational stages; second, it is an expectation towards learners to develop social skills through certain conversation topics. Given that findings, an approach to comprehensively cover all the speech acts in the textbooks is by including a specific section dedicating to speech act input and strategies.