ABSTRACT

An Analysis of Request Speech
in 3rd-year Middle School Textbooks


Choi, Min-ji
Major in English Education
Graduate School of Education
Ulsan University


It is impossible to successfully accomplish the goal of language learning without the sufficient analysis and study regarding textbooks, in the Korean setting where language input is given mainly in the classroom and language learning primarily relies on textbooks.
Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate request expressions in English textbooks used in Korean middle school and is to help EFL Korean learners improve their communicative competence on choosing an appropriate request speech act.
This study is organized as follows. First, the previous theories on speech acts and requests were reviewed. Second, various types of request and strategies were surveyed as tools for the analysis.

This study used one hundred and fifty examples of dialogue in the twelve textbooks for third graders in middle school for analytical contents. The examples are classified into the thirteen request types presented by Gibbs and nine request strategies presented by Blum-Kulka.
The major findings of this study are: First, the thirteen request expressions of Gibbs are not shown variously within dialogue examples. There were seven types in the textbook which has the most requests. Also, ability, unique and direct request are shown frequently throughout the analysed textbooks. Second, in the analysis of request strategies, supportive moves are used only in a few request throughout the analysed textbooks.
Consequently, this study shows that thirteen request types and nine strategies are not well presented in Middle school English textbooks. The textbooks tend to favor direct ways of making request compared with the ways in which native speaker of English perform the action of request. Many of the request strategies employed by native speakers are not well represented in the dialogue.
To solve these problems, textbook authors will have to include more various and authentic instances which deal with relevant situations and expressions in textbooks.
In addition to this method, advancement of teachers'' knowledge of pragmatics is vitally necessary to help the students improve their communicative competence. They should provide diverse examples which are possible to happen in actual life, using English literature, English-language movies and so on.