Researching and Teaching Second Language Speech Acts in the Chinese Context

Dr. Cynthia Lee is Associate Professor of Centre for Applied English Studies at the University of Hong Kong. Interlanguage pragmatics is one of her research areas. Over the past 12 years, she has secured two prestigious government-fund research grants to investigate the acquisition and development of L2 speech acts of Chinese learners of English from childhood to their teens, and has published numerous articles in pragmatics journals, including Pragmatics, International Review of Pragmatics, Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics, and Journal of Pragmatics. A book chapter on Chinese English learners’ speech act behaviours and Chinese culture will appear in Chen’s edited volume Politeness Phenomena Across Chinese Genres, published by Equinox in October, 2017. She has also taught the postgraduate courses of “Pragmatics Learning and Teaching”, “Discourse Analysis” and “Second Language Acquisition”.

• Prologue.- Preface.- Introduction.- Contributions of the Book.- Organization of the Book.- Chapter One.- 1.1 Introduction.- 1.2 Pragmatics.- 1.3 Speech Act Competence and Development in L1 and L2.- 1.4 Teachability of L2 Speech Acts.- 1.5 Summary.- Chapter Two.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Developing L2 Speech Act Competence.- 2.3 Researching L2 Speech Act Competence.- 2.4 Summary.- Chapter Three.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Culture and Speech Act Performance.- 3.3 Chinese Cultural Concepts for Interpersonal Communication – Limao (politeness) and Mianzi (facework).- 3.4 Influence of Chinese Cultural Norms and Language on Chinese and English Speech Act Performances.- 3.5 Summary.- Chapter Four.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Development of L2 Requests.- 4.3 Development of L2 Apologies.- 4.4 Development of L2 Compliment-responses.- 4.5 Development of L2 Refusals.- 4.6 Development of L2 Complaints.- 4.7  Trajectory of Chinese English Learners’ L2 Speech Act Development.- 4.8 Summary.- Chapter Five.-5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 Teaching Speech Acts: Instruction Versus Natural Exposure.- 5.3 Developing Speech Act Competence.- 5.4 What Speech Acts to Teach to Chinese Learners of English?.- 5.5 How to Develop Speech Act Competence for Chinese Learners of English? Practical Ideas and Teaching Materials.- 5.6 Summary.- Chapter Six.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 Importance of Understanding Learners’ L1 and L2 Speech Act Performance.- 6.3 Allowing Space for L2 Learners to Make Their Own Choices and Respect Their Decisions.- 6.4 The Ways Forward.

“As an accessible and enjoyable read, Lee’s book is a valuable addition to the current literature on L2 speech acts. … This book will be particularly appealing to researchers interested in Chinese EFL learners’ L2 pragmatic development, and also to ELT practitioners including but not limited to tertiary English teachers who are keen to implement a pragmatics-focused pedagogy based on sound language learning theories.” (Chris Kwan, The Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, Vol. 6 (2), 2019)