A Study of Iranʹʹs High School PrepTextbooks for Levinsonʹʹs Dispreferred Seconds

This study was intended to investigate the application and presentation of dispreferred seconds in English textbooks taught at Iranʹs high school prep centers referred to as an EFL setting. Since dispreferred seconds normally occur in conversations, dialogs and the respective exercises were the target of this investigation. The texts were examined carefully to see if dispreferred seconds were effectively introduced in them. In other words, the goal was to find out if dispreferred seconds have been presented in the texts in the same way as they are used by native speakers. The data were analyzed by determining the total number of disprefered seconds, the number of the unmarked as well as the marked ones plus their percentage.The findings revealed that the presentation of different types of dispreferred seconds were proved inefficient based on the principles and compared to the way they are used by native speakers.This work was hoped to detect the inappropriate materials based on this research and help improve syllabus design by taking the pragmatic principles into consideration and incorporating sociocultural aspects of competence as a part of communicative competence into the teaching materials.