Abstract
<p>The present study aimed at investigating the pragmatic competence of the Yemeni Non-Native Speakers of English (YNNSs) through examining their performance in the speech act of refusals. The study followed the qualitative comparative analytic approach. For the purpose of attaining the required data for this study, forty (YNNSs) and forty American Native Speakers (ANSs) of English were involved. The questionnaire used for collecting data from the participants was a written Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which was developed by Beebe et el. (1990), employed for collecting the data related to the use of refusal strategies by the two groups of participants in English. The data collected from DCT was analyzed by using a loading scheme adapted from Beebe et al. (1990). This study revealed that the Yemeni NNSs were not pragmatically competent enough in English. In spite of the similarity between the two groups in their use of refusal strategies, the differences between them were more apparent. The total number of strategies used by the American NSs was almost double those used by the Yemeni NNSs in all refusal situations. This study recommends that instructors should design contextualized, task-based, oral activities and integrating the intercultural aspects of language into ELT textbooks. </p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0895/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
Highlights
Forty Yemeni NNSs of English who graduated from English language departments, Faculties of Languages, Education and Arts, at Sana'a University
In recent years Discourse Completion Task (DCT) has become the standard method of pragmatic knowledge evaluation for assessing knowledge of speech acts Kasper (2000)
The employed DCT in this study presented twelve written situations in which American NSs and Yemeni NNSs of English use similar or different techniques while utilising the act of refuse
Summary
Teaching and learning the English language are crucial elements of the curricula at various levels of education in most of the countries around the world and in Yemen as well. It has become a necessary means of communication. Since the beginning of the new millenary, English has become an international language. The establishment and global extent of English have been developed by four foremost parts, ; the global expansion of the British Empire, the United States of America rise in political, economic, and power, the modern growth in data, technology, and information towards internationalization and globalization (House, 2006)
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