Pragmatic dimensions of Prospect Series: A textbook evaluation
Pragmatic dimensions of Prospect Series: A textbook evaluation

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates the pragmatic dimensions of Prospect Series, Iranian high school textbooks, and the extent to which these books can be reliable sources for developing language learners’ pragmatic competence. To do so, Cohen’s and van Ek and Trim’s taxonomies of speech acts and functions were employed to manifest whether the books are pragmatically suitable. The data analyses revealed that all types of speech acts were present, although unequally, throughout the series, except Declaratives which has been ignored in the conversations of Prospect 1, 2 and 3. Lack of Declaratives is a big disadvantage. Additionally, all kinds of language functions were present in the textbooks but rather erratically and unevenly. The findings seem to imply that lack of Declaratives, and unequal distributions of language functions and speech acts may limit language learners’ pragmatic competence, which can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunications. To compensate the drawbacks, several implications were provided.

• Details
• Contents