Investigating the Pragmatic Knowledge in the content of Conversation Textbooks

Section: Research Paper
Published
Jun 24, 2025
Pages
56-76

Abstract

Pragmatic competence is an important ingredient for language proficiency since the grammatical knowledge alone is not sufficient. In this way, the pragmatic content in textbooks, especially conversation textbooks, used for Teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is important and should not be neglected. It should be oriented towards the facilitation of students communicative competence development. As a result, it seems that the development of students communicative competence in English should be in their overall objectives or at least within implicit goals.The current study aims to contribute to investigating the pragmatic knowledge offered by the content of conversation textbooks used to teach Iraqi under-graduate EFL students. The study is a content analysis of a part of conversation textbook series called Person to person quantitatively and qualitatively.The study finds that there is a poverty of some components of pragmatic information such as implicature, formality, and appropriateness in spite of being highly important for any communication. In regards to pragmatic tasks, it seems that the series lacks the balance between pragmatically- oriented tasks and culturally- oriented tasks. Moreover, the series is poor with culturally-oriented tasks.

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How to Cite

Salim Qasim Al-Ahmad, T., ذكرى, Mudafar Al-Rassam, E., & أباء. (2025). Investigating the Pragmatic Knowledge in the content of Conversation Textbooks. Adab Al-Rafidayn, 54(99), 56–76. https://doi.org/10.33899/radab.2024.147921.2107