Linguistic and communicative features of instructions in selected didactic materials for learning Polish as a foreign language

Abstract

The starting point for this article are postulates presented more than 20 years ago by Anna Burzyńska (1998) in a publication devoted to didactic instruction. The development of linguistics and changes in glottodidactics that have taken place since that time justify the resumption of such research. In the first part of the article, theoretical and descriptive, the genre of instruction is described from the point of view of pragmalinguistics (as a speech act) and its communicative features (in an official and didactic situation). The second part presents the results of the analysis of instructions found in selected textbooks and exercise books for learning Polish as a foreign language at the elementary and intermediate level. Both parts form the foundation for formulating the final conclusions. The main conclusion formulated in the article is that didactic instructions in textbooks and exercise books are potential speech acts, implemented each time in a particular didactic situation, and their schematism is not a disadvantage, but a desirable feature; this applies to the formal features of instructions and names of activities that help in teaching basic language skills, while the objects of these activities (texts, content of exercise and tasks, etc.) are (should be) novel.