The aim of this pioneering study was to define and describe motivation for the acquisition of interlanguage pragmatic competence. Interlanguage pragmatic motivation was investigated from two perspectives: (1) general pragmatic motivation, displaying L2 learners’ motivation to acquire pragmatic strategies, pragmatic routines, politeness strategies, turn-taking patterns, and cultural familiarity; and (2) speech-act-specific motivation, representing learners’ motivation to acquire the pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic norms of performing speech acts. Seventy-five EFL learners were studied using two pragmatic motivation questionnaires and a discourse completion task. The relationships among the general pragmatic motivation, speech-act-specific motivation, and pragmatic production were then investigated. The findings showed that EFL learners are highly motivated to learn English language pragmatic features from both motivational perspectives. Further analyses revealed that the learners fell short of having satisfactory L2 pragmatic production. Regression equations revealed that speech-act-specific motivation has the explanatory power of predicting pragmatic production in EFL learners but general pragmatic motivation does not manifest such an influence on L2 learners’ production. It is concluded that high general pragmatic motivation does not necessarily correlate with better pragmatic production.

No abstract

This study explores TEFL teachers' and non-TEFL teachers' perceptions about the relationship between second language acquisition (SLA) research and language pedagogy with regard to familiarity, involvement, accessibility, consultation, relevance, and usefulness of SLA research in L2 pedagogy. To this end, 83 teachers, 40 TEFL teachers and 43 non-TEFL teachers, participated in this study. They filled out a questionnaire addressing their perceptions about SLA research and language pedagogy. The results revealed that the majority of TEFL teachers involved in doing research, at least as their educational term projects, while mostly no contribution was reported by non-TEFL teachers. In addition, TEFL teachers insisted that L2 teachers need to be involved in SLA research to be successful in their teaching career, while non-TEFL teachers were of the opposite opinion. Moreover, it was revealed that TEFL teachers considered the knowledge gained from research studies relevant and useful to their classroom actions, whereas non-TEFL teachers saw their experience more important for managing their classroom actions. Although both groups had contradictory perceptions of the relationship between SLA research and language pedagogy, they showed some common points in this regard. That is, both groups reported on their difficulty in having access to the research materials; they also expressed their willingness to do research.

The main theme of this volume is to discuss discourse analysis and familiarize the readers, especially undergraduate students of TESOL and Education, with the main topics in discourse studies. According to Flowerdew, one of the features of this book is its focus on a wide range of approaches to discourse and discourse analysis, namely Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Register, Speech Act Theory, the Cooperative Principle and Politeness, Conversation Analysis, Genre Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and Corpus Linguistics. However, what distinguishes this book from others books of discourse, and probably from other similar books on discourse and language teaching, is its practical view toward discourse and discourse analysis, i.e., it is clearly shown, by referring to real-life examples, how every discourse topic, issue, or feature can be analyzed and then taught in a language class. In fact, Floweredew’s attempt in this volume is to familiarize the readers with how discourse analysis can inform the practice of English language teaching. Thus, the book utilizes research findings and suggests guidelines, models, and approaches to language teachers as to how discourse studies can be insightful in language teaching methodology, materials development, and evaluation.