An Analysis of Speech Acts in STEAM Students’ Video Blogs

Abstract

The popularity of video blogs as a medium of mass communication nowadays has reached the educational landscape, and these are now being adapted as instructional materials and assessment tools. Video blogs, more commonly known as vlogs, have given students more opportunities to communicate and can therefore be a viable source of data on students’ communication skills in the second language. Using Searle’s categories and taxonomy of illocutionary speech acts, this study aimed to determine the types of illocutionary speech acts derived from Oral Communication video blogs created by grade 11 STEAM students of Silliman University Senior High School. The study involved 40 students from Grade 11 STEAM strand. This study employed an
observational descriptive research design using the students’ video blogs about the invention they made in their Earth Science class. A total of 193 utterances were derived from the video blogs and were classified according to Searle’s Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts. The students’ use of speech acts as gleaned from their utterances was generally appropriate to the context of the video blogs. Although there were some illocutions that were predominant in the scripts, the students, nonetheless, used
a variety of speech acts in their utterances. Furthermore, an in-depth inquiry into this present topic may be pursued to generate ideas for the teaching of speech acts and of communication in general, as well as for the preparation of appropriate instructional materials. The end goal is to provide the kind of STEAM education that enhances effective communication not just in the classroom but in society.