Structured In-Class Debates in English for Specific Purposes Lessons: Performance of Speech Acts and Modification of Illocutionary Force

for specific purposes (ESP) predominates at all levels of their university studies and future workplace activities in the multinational IT sector. Since IT students’ pragmatic competence in performing communicative functions is essential for their effective communication in an academic setting and a global work environment, it is important to investigate this aspect of their language systematically and carefully. Accordingly, this paper deals with IT students’ speech acts and modification of the illocutionary force while participating in structured in-class debates on controversial issues related to their field of study. Since structured debates are based on learners’ spontaneous communication and immediate responses, they seem to be a suitable instrument for eliciting samples of learner language. Speech acts, boosters and hedges were analysed manually and through the corpus-based analysis of transcribed debates in Sketch Engine. The analysis revealed that students used a wide range of speech acts and different boosters and hedges for both increasing and reducing the illocutionary force. Besides, the ways IT students used boosters and hedges reflect how they assume and share their professional knowledge and experience in their discourse community.