A Cross-sectional Study of Iranian EFL Learners' Request Strategies

Abstract

This study was a cross-sectional investigation into the request strategies used by Iranian learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and Australian native speakers of English. The sample involved 96 B.A. and M.A. Iranian EFL learners and 10 native speakers of English. A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used to generate data related to the request strategies used by each group. The selection of request situations in the DCT was based on 2 social factors of relative power and social distance. Although the results revealed pragmatic development, particularly in the movement from direct to conventionally indirect strategies on the part of the EFL learners, the EFL learners with higher proficiency displayed overuse of indirect type of requesting, whereas the native group was characterized by the more balanced use of this strategy. The lower proficiency EFL learners, on the other hand, overused the most direct strategy type. In terms of the influence of the social variables, the findings of this research revealed that as far as social power is concerned, the EFL learners displayed closer performance to the native speakers. But considering social distance, it seems that the Iranian EFL learners had not acquired sufficient sociopragmatic knowledge to display proper social behavior

The Use of Discourse Completion Task (DCT) As Explicit Instruction On Indonesian Efl Learners' Production of Suggestion Acts

“…Communication breakdowns may happen if the learners are not knowledgeable of social, cultural, and discourse aspects in different situations bound with the language they produce. Mostly, research in interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) compared between English native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) in realizing the speech act strategies when they use the language (Matsumura, 2003;Schauer, 2006;Felix-Brasdefer, 2007;Grossi, 2009;Jalilifar, Hashemian, & Tabatabaee, 2011). Since Kasper and Schmidt (1996) argue that ILP has notably involved within the larger body of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies, it starts attracting researchers to examine the effects of instruction on ILP development.…”

Native speakers' assessment of (im)politeness of non-native speakers' requests

“…In a comparative cross-cultural study, the request strategies of 96 Iranian EFL learners were compared with those of 10 Australian native speakers of English. The results demonstrated that while native speakers were balanced in their use of direct or indirect request strategies, Iranian EFL learners with lower linguistic proficiency overused direct strategies and underused the indirect ones and those with higher linguistic proficiency overused indirect strategies and underused the direct ones (Jalilifar, Hashemian & Tabatabaee, 2011). Ahangari and Shoghli's (2011) investigation of request strategies in a comparative study of Iranian EFL learners and Canadians demonstrated that both groups used conventionally indirect strategies realized through query-preparatory.…”

Doğrudan Edimbilim Eğitiminin İlköğretim Öğrencilerinin Edimbilimsel Gelişimi Üzerindeki Etkileri

“…Contrarily, related to the cultural hierarchic model, Chinese learners were competent in the realization of their partners' social power and they could produce appropriate language consequently. Jalilifar et al (2011) conducted a cross-cultural study on differences between the Iranian EFL learners' and Australian native speakers' use of request strategies. It was found that there was a relationship between the learners' proficiency level and the use of indirect request strategies like native speakers.…”