A Pragmatic Comparison among Language Learning Materials

Making language learners familiar with pragmatics, the invisible meaning, needs a suitable content except for what teachers bring to the class as extra activities. Foreign language learning contexts mostly consist of learners learning foreign languages in private language institutes and academies. The textbooks used in these institutes and academies are often those used worldwide. The degree to which these textbooks provide learning materials in improving learners’ pragmatic knowledge of the English as a foreign language is under investigation. This study sought to provide an overview of the number of pragmatic constructs present in eight Intermediate and upper-intermediate language learning textbooks. Some aspects of pragmatics like politeness and conversation analysis, much related to interactive factors and all as supporting communicative skills of learners were searched and found in these textbooks. As for qualitative studies used in education, in this case, analysis of documents and materials was used to gather information from language learning textbooks. Each interactive factor is assigned a code and these codes were compared and constructed. The results of this comparison showed the practicality of some of the textbooks concerning specific interactive factors subject to investigation in contrast to other ones. In conclusion, the study set out useful findings for teachers and material designers to choose and improve the materials that will be taught in second or foreign language contexts.