Teaching Speech Acts to Korean Students

2014

Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 2016

This paper proposes that activities based on a variety of drama-based techniques could be valuable in giving Asian ESL learners opportunities to use communicative spoken English confidently and without restraint during their time in English-language-speaking countries. These learners often get anxious when in situations where they are required to speak in English. Fears about making errors related to grammar, fluency and clarity that might cause them to be embarrassed stand in the way of unencumbered speech output. In addition, cultural issues linked to voice-projection and body language can hinder oral interaction in English and hamper their motivation to speak. They are, therefore, deprived of much-needed speaking practice. I find that drama lets my students speak communicatively, free of the dread of constant correction, in a relaxed and enjoyable learner-centred environment that appears to help diminish their anxiety and inhibitions. As a result, their motivation to speak increases, leading to extended speech production.

In recent years, South Korea has been afflicted with what is called "English Fever." The reason for this is the country's primary desire to scale the international ladder to become one of the world's economic giants. Hence, it is understandable that the country is fervid in its efforts to include communicative English language teaching/learning in its academic curriculum and require all its learners from elementary to tertiary level to learn spoken English so that they can participate fully in establishing and carving a niche in the global economic battleground.

International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 2015

This study aims at not only describing speech acts but highlights the importance of the teaching of speech acts as well. Recent second language research on speech acts represents a focus on pragmatics, based on the theories of speech acts proposed by Austin and Searle. It has been widely believed and shared in linguistic quarters that there has been very little or no systematic comparison of languages from the point of view of speech acts and rules of speaking. As a result, intercultural miscommunication is often caused by foreign language learners' falling back on their native language sociocultural norms in realizing speech acts in a target language. To make language learners attain pragmatic use of any foreign language requires first theoretical and then practical study of "speech acts". The teaching of "structural, functional and affective" power of the language in actual use through student projects and classroom discussions of both on the structure, the function and the affect may well help learners to become effective communicators. Therefore, the inclusion of the functional and notional aspects of language being taught to the curriculum cannot be an issue to be ignored. The results of this study puts forward the possible sources of sociopragmatic failures of learners and describe the sociopragmatic development of foreign language learners. Therefore, as foreign language teaching and learning is considered to be a global issue throughout the world, the descriptions and teaching implications of this study may shed light over curriculum design and actual language teaching milieus.

The Modern Language Journal, 2009

Teachers' Voices: Obstacles to Communicative Language Teaching in South Korea, 2017

Using focus groups and semi-structured interviews, data were collected to investigate Korean in-service English teachers’ attitudes toward the appropriateness and possibility of adopting a communicative language teaching approach within the South Korean secondary school system. The data revealed that many teachers are in favor of CLT, however various obstacles stand in their way of classroom implementation. This study first addresses the six prominent constraints that teachers reportedly face when trying to use CLT approaches, and examines why these difficulties are negatively affecting the possibility and appropriateness of communicative language teaching being applied. Several of the problems articulated suggest that the communicative approach may not currently be appropriate for Korean secondary English classes; therefore, possible solutions to these problems are suggested, as well future directions that may make communicative language teaching more suitable in the South Korean context.

During the past decade English education has been changing in Korea (Jeon, 2009). The government’s focus has been to push for a more communicative approach in the teaching of English, as South Korea’s economic growth began to make a more globalised impact (Littlewood, 2007,Jeon, 2009, Kwon, 2009, Dailey, 2010). In order to foster a greater proficiency in English among its population, the government has adapted the existing curricula, and placed a greater focus on communicative approaches to learning English (Littlewood, 2007, Butler, 2011).

KOTESOL proceedings: The Second Pan …, 1999

The vision of the conference (actually the second in a series of four conferences) was to bring together English teaching professionals from all over Asia to share their teaching experiences their research, and to see if it was possible to define an Asian context for teaching English. Over 220 presentations from Korea, Japan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom, addressed both practical and theoretical aspects of English language teaching in Asia. A great many of the presentations focused on collaborative research, from how to start an action research project to the actual results and observations of teachers who had collaborated cross-culturally. Of special note were several research projects between teachers in Japan and Thailand that started at PAC1 held in Thailand in January, 1997. PAC2 gave ELT professionals the same opportunity to find teachers from other countries who shared similar concerns, and sparked a number of collaborative action-research projects. Though the results of the action research projects started at PAC2 may not be available until PAC3 (Japan, November, 2001) or PAC4 (Taiwan, November, 2003), some of the articles in this conference proceedings are representative of the kind of collaborative research the PAC series serves to foster.

Speech act is a functional unit in the form of an act which helps humans understand or accomplish things with words in communication. This research was aimed to find out and analyse the types of speech acts which were performed by teachers and students in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. The researcher employed the speech act theory from Cruse (2000) to analyse and interpret the research results. Qualitative research was applied in this research due to the data source was from the teaching and learning activities in naturalistic environments in English classrooms. The subjects of this research were teachers and students in REAL Equivalent English classrooms. The results showed that there were three types of speech acts found in the interactions between the teachers and students, namely locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. Locutionary act was performed when teachers and students uttered expressions with no certain intentions. Illocutionary act, on the other hand, was performed when the expressions contained certain intentions to listeners. Perlocutionary act was performed when the listeners showed responses and acted as feedback to the speakers' utterances. By conducting this research, the researcher hopes that it can give more insights to readers regarding to the study of speech act theory in pragmatics field.