Pragmatic Aspects of English for Tourism Course Books and ESL Learners Pragmatic Needs: A Speech Act Theory Perspective

Despite the need for communicating effectively for the ESL students engaged in jobs related to tourism industry, they still suffer from some incompetences while communicating in these contexts. Misunderstandings and communication breakdowns are said to mark many intercultural encounters as participants rely on the norms of their mother tongue and native culture to produce meaning in a foreign language. The aim of the current study is twofold: first, to study the extent that the course books deal with the pragmatic functions of language, and second, to assess the pragmatic needs of the EFL learners engaged in tourism industry. To study the pragmatic aspects of the course books, three different English for tourism course books were analyzed on the basis of Speech- act theory, and the frequency of each functional category was computed. Then, to assess the pragmatic needs of the EFL learners engaged in tourism industry, a discourse completion test consisting of fifty items (covering all the Speech-act Theory functions,) was given to 30 students studying EFL, and their pragmatic needs were specified on the basis of this test.