TITLE:
Exploring Implicature Awareness and Instructional Adequacy in Greek EFL Curriculum: A Pragmatic Perspective
AUTHORS:
Aglaia Rouki
KEYWORDS:
Pragmatics, Teaching Pragmatics, Conversational Implicature, EFL Learners, EFL Books
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.13 No.5,
September
21,
2023
ABSTRACT: This research paper addresses the burgeoning discourse surrounding pragmatics instruction, reflecting a broader trend of increased scholarly interest in the field with a particular focus on the explicit teaching of pragmatics within English as a Foreign. Within the context of Greek EFL education, where English is introduced at a young age, proficient Greek speakers of English often grapple with cross-cultural misunderstandings during communication. This study presents an extensive examination of the curriculum used in the initial year of Greek high school education (lyceums), with a specific focus on implicature. The central objective is to assess the adequacy of the instructional materials in cultivating learners’ pragmatic awareness, particularly their competence in identifying implicatures within written contexts. Notably, the analysis reveals a prevalence of non-creative implicatures, suggesting that contextual cues played a marginal role in their comprehension. Implicatures prominently featured in literary and lyrical forms, underscoring the propensity of poetic language for non-literal expression, while news articles demonstrated a predilection for literal language usage due to their objective nature. Furthermore, a limited utilization of relevant implicatures in instructional exercises is observed, with only a fraction of tasks capitalizing on this vital pragmatic facet. Specifically, among a total of 97 tasks, merely 8 exhibited partial incorporation of implicatures, representing less than 10% of the total exercise pool. The implications of these findings underscore the imperative of enhancing pragmatics instruction to better equip learners for effective cross-cultural communication.