Abstract:

EFL learners need to improve their pragmatic competence which refers to being able to use the language appropriately in different contexts. Therefore, these learners should be explicitly taught how to use speech acts appropriately in a variety of contexts considering the relationships between the interlocutors. However, the research on textbooks has revealed that speech acts are not covered adequately in most of the analysed coursebooks. Also, most of the textbooks fail to provide contexualised input for low-level EFL classes. Therefore, teachers need to adapt them or design their own materials. Using Materials designed with the help video clips can help teachers provide contextualized input for low-level EFL learners.

In this paper, a mixed-method study in which the researcher observed the effectiveness of viewing video clips in low-level Turkish EFL classes to teach speech acts will be presented. The participants, 42 low-intermediate EFL learners in a state university (Middle East Technical University) in Turkey, were administered a pre-test including 20 discourse completion task (DCT) items to determine the speech acts which they had difficulty in using appropriately. After the evaluation of the responses together with a native speaker instructor, the treatment sessions were prepared. Materials used in the sessions included some video clips extracted from three TV series, namely The big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad. The sessions provided the participants with sufficient conceptualized input, which enabled them to improve their metapragmatic knowledge since they were required to anlayse the relationships between the interlocutors. The handouts, including some structures to use in those contexts, helped the participants to improve their knowledge throughout the sessions. The sessions also included some tasks to use the speech acts in real-life like situations to get feedback. Therefore, the participants could more easily decide on which structures to use in such situations. The participants filled in the index cards for four weeks when they had the sessions and gave information about how much exposure they got outside the class by writing what they watched and how long they watched a program in English to provide data to determine what other factors, if any, caused an improvement in their competence. After the sessions, a mid-test was administered to analyse the responses focusing on the speech acts covered in the sessions. The perception questionnaire was given to the participants to get their opinions on the sessions. The opinions of the teachers who taught those classes were taken via semi-structured interviews. Four weeks later, a post-test was administered. The responses given to the pre-, mid-, and post- tests were analysed together with the same native speaker instructor teaching at the same institution. The results were analysed through one-way ANOVA.

The findings showed that the participants could improve their pragmatic competence in using the covered speech acts because of watching the video clips which included different structures and conceptualised pragmatic information for the same speech act in various contexts. After the analysis of the all the measures, some conclusions were drawn to help teachers who need to supplement their insufficient coursebooks and course developers to provide more conceptualised input to improve the pragmatic competence of their students in low-level EFL classes.

Keywords:

Video clips, EFL learners, Speech Acts, pragmatic knowledge, low-level classes.