A Quası-Experımental Study Of Implıcatures In Course Books Used At Unıversıty Preparatory Schools In Ankara


Thesis Type: Postgraduate

Institution Of The Thesis: Gazi University, Turkey

Approval Date: 2016

Thesis Language: Turkish

Student: Arezoo Babaeı Ajabshır

Supervisor: Cemal Çakır

Abstract:

Pragmatics, which is generally defined as the study of meaning in context, has been gaining increasing attention in linguistics and language teaching. It is what accounts for the social and cultural aspects of language use, without which language users would not be able to produce and interpret utterances properly and communication would fail. Previous research indicates that teaching pragmatics, explicit teaching in particular, proves to be effective. As a subtopic of pragmatics, implicature is the central concern of the current study. A term introduced by Grice (1967), implicature refers to what is meant but not said literally. Irony and idioms are examples of implicatures. Following the research about teaching pragmatics, research in teaching implicatures proves their teachability; explicit teaching specifically. Yet, there is scant research on these rather new subjects in teaching. There is specifically a large gap in the research on the sufficiency of course books in terms of implicatures. There is not enough research about teachers' approach to teaching implicatures as well. Although there is already research in teaching pragmatics and implicature, a detailed research on how explicit and implicit teaching approaches can affect implicature understanding and production of students is too few. The current research aims to shed a light on the just-mentioned gaps. Limiting the scope of the research to only Particularized Conversational Implicatures (PCIs) and Sentence-Level Conventional Implicatures (SLCIs), the study initially starts with a content analysis of 14 course books, aimed at finding activities teaching these types of implicatures, or dialogues which expose learners to them. It then goes on to report on the views and knowledge about implicatures of the general English upper-intermediate instructors of 5 different universities in Ankara. Finally, the effects of explicit and implicit teaching on teaching implicatures is tested on about 50 students. The results of the content analysis indicated that the course books hardly consider teaching implicatures. Only five out of fourteen course books yielded results, and these results were not remarkable. The results of the questionnaires unfortunately prove that teachers do not have a satisfactory level of knowledge about implicatures, and much less they teach them. The results of the experiment, on the other hand, verify previous research by proving that explicit teaching is more effective than implicit teaching in teaching implicatures. The explicit group outperformed the implicit group in total score which included both reception and production, and particularly in production of implicatures. SLCIs are particularly learned more effectively by explicit instruction. The explicit group learners also produced more correct direct answers in the post-test. The results all indicate that the teaching of implicatures seems to be rather neglected and not given the attention it deserves, whether by the course books, or by teachers. It also suggests that implicature teaching needs to be done more by explicit methods than by implicit ones. These findings might illuminate the way for material developers, teacher trainers, pre-service teachers, and in-service teachers to reconsider their teaching objectives to accommodate teaching implicatures and how to do it.