Pragmatic Elements in EFL Course Books

Pragmatic development or competence has been great concern particularly for the recent decades. Regarding this issue, questioning the existence and delivery of speech acts in EFL course books may be sententious, as learners employ them for pragmatic input. Although much research has been conducted referring to speech acts, comparably little research has been managed to investigate speech acts in English course books. This study aims at analyzing "Yes You Can" EFL course books from the perspective of speech acts in pragmatics. For this purpose, four 9th class EFL course books, the levels of which are A1 (Beginner) and A2 (elementary) were selected and the pragmatic modes of Searle's (1976) speech acts were applied to examine the books in the study. The results displayed that the evaluated EFL course books approved by the Ministry of Turkish National Education should be developed in terms of having pragmatic compounds. Conclusively, some implications for instructors, material designers, and course book authors were proposed.