Exploring Efl Pre-Service Teachers’ Use Of Directive Speech Acts in Microteaching Class

Abstract

This study aims to explore the directive speech acts used by EFL pre-service teachers in microteaching classes. Microteaching is a training class for pre-service teachers before they begin their teaching careers. There, pre-service teachers practice giving instructions to organise the class by using directive speech. Previous studies have investigated directive speech acts using the classifications of Yule (1996), Ibrahim (1993), and Kreidler (1998). Therefore, this study uses Searle's (1969) classification of directive speech acts. Searle (1969, as cited in Tanudjaja et al., 2021) divided directive speech into eight types: (1) commanding, (2) requesting, (3) suggesting, (4) forbidding, (5) questioning, (6) permitting, (7) encouraging, and (8) wishing. In this study, I employed a descriptive qualitative research design, utilising discourse analysis as the primary data analysis method. I observed video recordings of EFL pre-service teachers during their final demonstration in the microteaching class. The findings were analysed using Van Dijk's (1988) discourse analysis, which considers three dimensions of discourse: text, social cognition, and social context. After conducting observations, I found 366 directive utterances from 4 participants. Based on the findings, the most frequently used directive speech act was questioning (206), followed by requesting (75), permitting (38), commanding (28), suggesting (14), forbidding (2), encouraging (2), and wishing (1). EFL pre-service teachers employed various types of directive speech acts in the learning process, serving specific functions. Commanding is used to give orders firmly, requesting to ask students to do something more politely, suggesting to provide constructive advice, forbidding to limit or prohibit students from doing something, questioning to extract information from students, permitting to permit students, encouraging to give motivation and support, and wishing to convey hopes to students. Based on the communication between teachers and students who applied these directive speech acts, I concluded that EFL pre-service teachers have good discourse competence. They have adhered to the principles of cohesion and coherence in their communication. Good discourse competence in teachers contributes to the formation of effective interactions with students. This condition has a positive impact on the development of teachers' pedagogical competencies, especially in building communication that supports the learning process. Good discourse competence in teachers contributes to the formation of effective interactions with students. This condition has a positive impact on the development of teachers' pedagogical competence, especially in building communication that supports the learning process. The limitation of this study is the data source. I observed only four video recordings of teaching practices from one teaching practice, so the number of directive speech acts found was limited. Therefore, further research needs to expand the scope of data collection, such as observing more video recordings or teaching practices, to collect more findings