Gunawan, Antonius Biondi. 2025. Most Dominant Illocutionary Speech Act In English Lesson Interactions Of VIII-A Classroom in SMP Santa Maria Banjarmasin. Sarjana‘s Thesis. English Department, Faculty of Teachers‘ Training and Education, Lambung Mangkurat University, Banjarmasin. The first advisor: Dr. Novita Triana, S.Pd., M.A., the second advisor: Sirajuddin Kamal, S.S. M.Ed.

Keywords: Speech acts, Illocutionary act, Classroom interactions

The limited understanding of how teachers‘ and students‘ illocutionary speech acts interact hinders the development of effective pedagogical strategies to scaffold communication and enhance learning. While previous research has predominantly focused on the directive speech acts of teachers in classroom settings, there is a lack of studies that account the students‘ utterances. Recent studies suggest that pedagogical context can influence the distribution of speech acts, potentially shifting dominance to student utterances. This study addresses this theoretical gap by analyzing both teacher and student speech acts to determine the most dominant illocutionary speech act in English lessons of a private SMP.

Employing a qualitative descriptive method, the data were collected through live observation using audio and video recordings, and field notes from four English lesson sessions of a private SMP in the VIII grade. The subjects are the students and English teacher of Grade VIII. The data were analysed using thematic analysis.

A total of 1.516 utterances from both the teacher and students were transcribed, categorized, and analyzed based on Searle's (1979) illocutionary speech act taxonomy. The findings revealed that the assertive speech was the most dominant speech act. This dominance was primarily driven by students during interactive tasks, including answering questions, participating in discussions, and reading aloud. These results suggest that a student-centered pedagogical approach fosters higher student engagement and the strategic use of assertive utterances.