Realizing the Speech Act of Requeston pragmatic competence task performance The case of third year students at the department of English Batna2 University

Abstract

The current research aimed at examining third year EFL students’ performance on pragmatic competence tasks with a specific emphasis on the speech act of request realization. To this end, we attempted to analyse the request strategies used by students in terms of frequency and typology,study the effect of the social factors on their choices of the linguistic forms and politeness norms, and find out the difficulties they face in performing a pragmatic competence task. Data were collected by means of an adapted written discourse completion test and a group interview from a total of thirty-five third year EFL students at the department of English Batna2 university and analysed based on BLUM-KULKA and OLSHTAIN(1984)and BLUM-KULKA and all (1989) request realization patterns, as well as Brown & Levinson(1978, 1987) politeness theory. The results of the WDCT demonstrated that the conventionally indirect request strategy, the query preparatory, was more frequently used than any other strategy,which means that students can use only one strategy type for different request situations. Furthermore, the social factors of social distance, power and imposition did not affect the students’ choice of pragmalinguistic elements but rather had a slight effect on the use of politeness strategies. Finally, the group interview results indicated that the difficulties that students encountered on the pragmatic competence task performance referred to the deficiency in grammar and vocabulary(structure and expression) which prove their luck of unawareness of the pragmatic competence requirements. Based on these findings, We suggest thatEFL teachers should pay more attention to pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge and raise student awareness of the English socio-cultural norms of speech act realization