A CONVERSATION ANALYTIC STUDY OF DIALOGUES IN IRANIAN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS

Learning to participate in ordinary conversation is one of the most difficult tasks for second and foreign language learners. Conversation is the medium through which we accomplish language learning. The idea that ESL/EFL material developers use authentic spoken language data for the design of language instructional materials is gaining a foothold in the latest curriculum development practices. Language development is all about one’s ability to communicate functionally and interactively, i.e., communicative competence, the development of which is the stated goal of communicative language teaching. In Celce-Murcia’s (2007) model of communicative competence, the vital role of interactional competence is emphasized. Language learners need to develop interactional competence in conjunction with other components of communicative competence. Just as applied linguists have spoken of language as a system (e.g., phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and discourse), various interactional practices combine to form conversation as a system.In a major shift of paradigm, high school English textbooks in Iran were substantially revised a long time ago to incorporate the latest pedagogical and research findings into language education. Among other things, the dialogues contained in these books ostensibly represent authentic materials. Applying the principles of Conversation Analysis through a descriptive method of research, which is characteristic of CA studies, this paper scrutinizes these dialogues to determine whether they could accomplish the objectives formulated for them in the first place (i.e., development of communicative competence). Four specific criteria (i.e., turn-taking, sequencing, overall structuring and repair) were applied to these dialogues to determine whether they are consistent with the tenets of CA or not. The findings were that these dialogues do not represent authentic materials, and thus, fall short of developing communicative competence in general and interactional competence in particular. As CA rigorously and systematically describes sequences of verbal interaction, it is relevant to determining the materials which could be used for the purpose of foreign or second language instruction, especially teaching sociopragmatic rules. This could be an important step toward ensuring that sociopragmatic knowledge is taught through conversational interaction, given that being equipped with the knowledge of conversational interaction, learners come to be aware of cross-cultural variations, which is vital for effective verbal interaction in and out of class. Language teachers need to know which dialogues engender in their students the sociopragmatically appropriate verbal behavior in the foreign language, and learners need to learn what to expect and what others expect of them in an act of verbal communication.

کلیدواژه ها:

Conversation Analysis ، foreign/second language ، dialogues ، sociopragmatics ، communicative competence ، interactional competence