Teaching Successful Spoken Requests in a UK EAP Context

Christian Jones & Nicola HalenkoSchool of Languages and International Studies

University of Central Lancashire

Teaching Successful Spoken Requests in a UK EAP Context

1. Instructional effect upon interlanguage pragmatic competence

2. What makes a successful request?3. Implications for teaching and learning

Research into Interlanguage Pragmatics(ILP) • Research has clearly shown that NS and NNS differ in the production of speech acts• Pragmatic development is a slow process under natural conditions• Learners receiving pragmatic instruction often outperform those who do not (e.g.

Alcon Soler 2005)• Explicit and deductive instruction is more effective for learning than implicit and

inductive teaching (Norris and Ortega 2000, 2001)• Requests extensively researched in EFL contexts (e.g. Alcon Soler 2005)• Very little in a study abroad or EAP context

Teaching pragmatically effective requests (Halenko and Jones, 2011)

Study 1DESIGN:One group receiving interventional treatment/one control group (12 weeks)26 Chinese EAP learners, all at B2 level (CEFR)Data collected using discourse completion tasks (DCTs)Pre- and immediate post-test evaluationsDelayed post-test (six weeks)Semi-structured interview

Sample of a written DCT

At the tutor’s office• You have just received an essay back and want to discuss it with

your tutor. S/he is very busy. You go to your tutor’s office after the class. You want to make an appointment to see her/him as soon as possible. What would you ask?

You:

TreatmentExplicit teaching • Sociopragmatic Sample activity: students discuss situations they need to make spoken requests and discuss the appropriateness of given samples• PragmalinguisticSample activity: students analyse moves in spoken requests, pre-request and request language. This is followed by focussed practice

Results• Significant gains made in DCT scores from pre-post-test for experimental

group• No significant gains for the control group at these stages or at the delayed

test stage• A significant decrease in scores at the delayed-test stage for the

experimental group• Students felt instruction was useful and helped them to communicate

more effectively in and around the university setting

Summary of study one• Explicit instruction effective, at least in the short term• The need for regular instruction indicated by weaker delayed

test scores• The UK EAP environment alone did not seem to contribute to

development of successful spoken requests• Students themselves feel it is worthwhile

What makes a successful spoken request? (Jones and Halenko, under review)

Study 2DESIGN:Analyse successful spoken requests from study one (those with a mean score of three or more)Using corpus tools, (Lextutor) find out the most frequent words and chunks usedCompare these to general reference corpus to find out keywordsQualitatively examine two contrasting scenarios (high social distance, low social distance ) to show which moves students used

Results

Most frequent words (see table 1)Most frequent words in comparison to reference corpora(see table 2)Keywords (see table 3)Most frequent chunks in two scenarios (see table 4)Keywords in two scenarios (see table 5)

Samples of successful and unsuccessful requests

+SD x<y 1. At the student information deskExcuse me, I want to find a new place to live. The place must be including gas, water, net and electricity. (Raters’ mean score =1.6)

1. At the libraryExcuse me. I’ve some problem with this computer, it can’t access to my university email account. Could you help me please? (Raters’ mean score =4.7)

Samples of successful and unsuccessful requests-SD x=y 2.In the classroom

Hi, I Know you are good at doing the presentation, would you mind to be the first one to give the introduction about our presentation? (Raters’ mean score =4)

2. In the library Hi,now I need to research some information for a group project, as I know you did a very similar project, thus I want you can give some suggestions for me with the research. (Raters’ mean score =2.7)

Results • Successful requests often, but not always, contained

predictable ‘request language’• Successful requests did not have to be 100% accurate• Successful requests needed to contain the appropriate

level of formality and expected ‘moves’ for the context

Teaching implications• Explicit teaching of pragmatically appropriate spoken requests is

effective in this context, although there is a clear need for regular revision

• Teaching needs to go beyond the level of the request itself and also raise awareness at the level of discourse: context, appropriacy, expected ‘moves’

• Successful request data could be used as a model for learners

References• Alcon Soler, E., (2005). Does instruction work for learning pragmatics in the EFL context? System 33, 417–435.• Halenko, N., & Jones, C. (2011) Teaching pragmatic awareness of spoken requests to

Chinese EAP learners in the UK: Is explicit instruction effective? System 39, 240–250.• Jones, C., & Halenko, N. (under review).What makes a successful spoken request?

Using corpus tools to analyse learner language in a UK EAP context.• Kučera, H., & Francis, W. (1967). A computational analysis of present-day American

English. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University Press

ReferencesLexical Tutor available from: http://www.lextutor.ca/ Leech, G., Rayson, P., & Wilson, A. (2001). Word frequencies in written and spoken English: Based on the British National Corpus. London: Longman.Norris, J., & Ortega, L. (2000). Effectiveness of L2 instruction: a research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning 50, 417–528.

Questions?