A Textbook Evaluation of Speech Acts: The Case of English Result Series

The present work aimed to investigate the frequency of occurrences and proportions of speech acts of complaints and compliments in the four volumes of the course book English Result (Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, and Upper-intermediate), by Mark Hancock and Annie McDonald (2009), published by Oxford University Press. Investigation of the two speech act strategies was based on complaints strategies (Olshtain and Weinbach, 1987) and compliment strategies (Wolfson and Manes, 1981). It was found that the books were rich in terms of the number of the two speech acts, but in presenting them, there were one or two dominant strategies in both cases. Chi-square analysis demonstrated that there was a significant difference in the proportion of complaint and compliment strategies through the four course books. In general, the books were reported to provide learners with adequate amount of complaints and compliments, but with low variations in strategy types, which may result in learners not having sufficient conceptual and practical knowledge of speech acts to use them appropriately in different contexts. Based on the findings of this study, it seems necessary to incorporate more authentic and helpful instruction of speech acts along with the course books, to improve the learners’ performance in real life communication.