Pragmatically-oriented Input in Business English Textbooks: The Case of Speech Act Realization

As textbooks are main sources for pragmatic development in EFL contexts, they are evaluated to see if they contain adequate inputs. Hence, the frequency of four ubiquitous speech acts (apology, complaint, refusal, request) across four business English textbooks (Business Basics, Business Result, Business Venture, Powerbase) was analyzed. The pragmatic analysis showed that requests and complaints were respectively the most and the least frequent speech acts distributed in Business Basics (124; 3), Business Result (1068; 32), Business Venture (135; 8), and Powerbase (230; 24). The highest frequency of speech acts was found in Business Result’s Advanced; Business Venture’s Version 1; and Powerbase’s Beginner levels. Due to the insufficient distribution of speech acts across the textbooks and within the levels, it is recommended that materials developers reconsider the adequacy of pragmatic input and draw on supplementary materials to compensate for such speech act realization inadequacy.