How to critically analyse a research article effectively?

1. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Pragmatic failure of the Turkish EFL learners in Request
Emails to their professors
Tazegul,Turgay , Engin At Kafkas University , Kars, Turkey

2. TEXT
• The text of this pragmatic discourse analysis research paper is
simpler in tone but there is extensive use of technical terms related to
pragmatics , politeness theory in interpersonal communication

3. TOPIC
• The study is conducted by ……Tazigul………et al (2016 ) at Turkish
English medium university in order to analyze the E-mail corpus of
34 Turkish EFL learners and sole purpose was to shed light on the
reasons of pragmatic failure in Request –mails from Turkish EFL
learners to their Two non-native ELT professors . As it is clearly
Evident from the Statement of the Topic “ Pragmatic Failure of
Turkish EFL Learners in request emails to their professors .

4. CONTEXT
• This descriptive Quantitative research was conducted in Academic settings in the
context of Turkish EFLL context
• In which e-mail communication setting is considered major focus of the study while
collecting data in order to for natural e-corpus .
• The literature in this inquiry based research is theoretical in nature and was
based on the research based knowledge generation in order to validate the
findings of previous researches conducted on the e-mail corpus pragmatic
analysis
• In order to check the extent of usage of directness and lexical modification in the e-
mails and causes of their pragmatics failure while requesting .

5. TARGET AUDIENCE
• The audience of this pragmatic discourse analysis is all the EFL
learners , EFL curriculum designers , EFL teachers , faculty and
administration of the departments .
• There is also knowledge for pragmatics researchers as it is reflected
and validated the findings of previous researches in the context of
pragmatics and theory of Politeness

6. DISCUSSION TOPIC
• There is comprehensive discussion about the settings of the study as
well as the frame work of this research which is politeness theory of
interaction
• It is the claim of the author that in e-mail communication settings
emails should be linguistically polite to facilitate interaction
• This claim is well supported by the following researchers ( Thomas
(1983) , Hadford and Bardov-Harlung (1996) , Bierenbach- Lucas
(2006-2007) .

7. • In the introductory section of the article there is a discussion about the
change in communication customs as stated by Biesenbach –Lucas
(2006)
• “ Student faculty interaction at university has undergone a shift from
face to face office hour consultations to Cyber consultations. ( p.10) .
• There is a detail discussion about the introduction of e-mail and its
significance as mentioned “ Widespread and versatile communication
channel between students and professors “ “ Customary among the
faculty their students nowadays ” (p.3)
• There is a brief note on the framework of the research and it explained
what is linguistic politeness ? And Why it is needed in interaction ?

8. • And its focus was based on the pragmatic failure , which is based on
previously proven facts that “ There are not any conventions for
linguistics sense in communication through e-mails “’.
• “ Linguistic politeness is also a non established convention in this
settings ( Crystal , 2001: Barson :2000, 2002, 2003) .
• Lakoff( 1999) defined linguistic politeness “ a system of interpersonal
relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential
for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange” (p.34)

9. • In order to support his claim in this research the author described
various studies about the spoken pragmatic discourse analysis( Blum-
Kuka : 1986 : Blum Kuka and Olshtian : 1986: Takahashi:2010) .
• But he found that there are few studies in the context of e-
communication pragmatic discourse analysis and no study in the
context of Turkish EFL context .
• These studies supported the claim and validated the findings of the
present research :
• “ Bierenbach-Lucas , 2006: Chen, 2006 : Bjorge, 2007 : Economidon-
Kogestsdis, 2011, Thomas : 1983”

10. RELEVANCE
• The claim and pragmatic findings of this Turkish e-discourse analysis
are relevant to all the EFL learners, teachers , researchers , and it
contributed in the knowledge generation .
• In the Pakistani context where English is also considered as Foreign
generally and second language specifically and there are large
numbers of Non-native ESL learners . It can guide the learners ,
faculty , curriculum designers and administration .

11. PERSPECTIVE
• The research is concreate and have universal appeal but its focus was on the linear model of
communication as it neglected the corpus data of two professors , their feedback or response
in case of these students e-requests .
• There can be various factors which can also be coded and rubric can be further
expanded as it was the limitation of the study so it claim was effectively
supported and affirmed by the findings but it is difficult to generalize the
findings for whole EFL learners .
• The recommendation of this research is quite appealing especially for all the non-native
departments and curriculum designers they should consider it but for that we have to do
more research on the e-communication discourse , its various aspects, etc.