Rating EFL Learners’ Interlanguage Pragmatic Competence by Non-Native English Speaking Teachers

Abstract

Nowadays more and more educational systems acknowledge that learning a second language is something more than merely learning of grammar and vocabulary. More attention is paid to pragmatics and intercultural communication and its assessment. This study was concerned with finding the criteria that Iranian EFL teachers consider when rating compliment responses produced by Iranian EFL learners. The participants of the study were 60 Iranian EFL teachers who took part in the study by filling out a pragmatic rating questionnaire prepared by the researchers themselves. The results of the study showed that overall the Iranian teachers considered seven macro criteria when rating EFL learners’ pragmatic productions. The findings have implications for the assessments of interlanguage pragmatics and revealed variation in the criteria that raters use in evaluating appropriateness.