International Journal of
Information and Education Technology

Abstract

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.