Abstract:
This study sought to investigate the impact of teaching speech acts and role relations through authentic audio-taped and video-taped materials on the level of Iranian EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. To this end, 55 intermediate learners were selected and randomly assigned to two experimental groups: the audio-taped group and the video-taped group. During the treatment, the audio-taped group received instruction through audio-taped materials (various authentic podcasts), while the experimental group through exposure to video-taped materials (extracts from some popular TV soap operas). The data analyses conducted prior to and following the treatment in both groups demonstrated that both groups had improved in terms of the knowledge of certain speech acts. However, the video-taped group was shown to have significantly outperformed the audio-taped group.
Machine summary:
"JELS, Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring 2010, 33-52 IAUCTB The Impact of Using Authentic Audio-Taped and Video-Taped Materials on the Level of EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Competence Dennis Moradkhan Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, Islamic Azad University North Tehran Branch, Iran Behnaz Jalayer MA in TEFL, Islamic Azad University North Tehran Branch, Iran Abstract Keywords: Introduction It is generally recognized that the goal of language teaching is to develop learners‟ ability to communicate appropriately in a given target language and culture.
Based on the results of this study, the researchers also concluded that podcasts as a sample of authentic audio- taped materials, like textbooks and teacher-students talks, were less effective in raising the students‟ awareness towards pragmatic aspects of language.
In the light of these findings, language teachers, especially in EFL contexts, can incorporate authentic video-taped materials into their language education processes, follow its principles in the L2 classroom, provide L2 learners with rich comprehensible input, engage them in interactive activities or productive language use, such as teacher-student talks, small-group discussions, role plays, semi-structured interviews, and pragmatic assessment tasks, grant them pragmatic comment or information on the input features, raise students‟ awareness towards pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of pragmatic competence, and help them make significant gains in pragmatic ability in the FL classroom."