Presupposition Triggers: Iraqi EFL Students' Strategies in Approaching Presupposition

Abstract

EFL students are observed to face various difficulties in approaching pragmatic issues; therefore, they resort to numerous strategies to arrive at convincing pragmatic interpretations, among these issues, presupposition constitutes one of the problematic areas for students. Thus, this paper aims at detecting the most common strategies taken on by Iraqi EFL university students in approaching the pragmatic interpretations of presupposition, eliciting the reasons behind presupposition failure and find out the possible solutions. Fifty Iraqi EFL students of the Department of English, College of Arts, Mustansiriyah University during the academic year 2021-2022 have been administered to a test. The paper concludes that Counterfactual Conditionals trigger ranks first since it scores the highest ratio while Implicative verbs trigger represents the lowest ratio. Most EFL students succeed to derive the suitable pragmatic interpretations of presupposition. Consequently, it can be noted that resolution strategy is preferred to the accommodation and rejection strategies.