Discourse Completion Test Research Articles

Native EFL Raters’ Criteria in Assessing the Speech Act of Complaint: The Case of American and British EFL Teachers

Despite the importance of interlanguage pragmatic rating (ILP) in the second language teaching and learning context, scant attention has been devoted to it. This study aims to investigate native EFL teachers’ major criteria in assessing the speech act of complaint produced by Iranian EFL learners. To fulfill this end, two groups of experienced native raters, including American (n=47) and British (n=30) EFL/ESL teachers, were elected for evaluating the complaint discourse completion tests (DCTs) made from video-prompts which were answered by EFL learners before. The content analysis of raters’ comments on the EFL learners’ productions revealed eleven different criteria including logical reasoning and comments, politeness, linguistic appropriacy, semantic formula, interlocutors’ relationship, register choice, formality, degree of intensity, cultural accommodations, degree of directness, and finally fluency and naturalness respectively from the most to the least frequent ones. The result of the t-test and chi-square analysis proved that British and American raters differed significantly in their degree of variations and preferences of these criteria. The results further showed that EFL learners’ responses seemed unreasonable and impolite to native raters which might be due to the different cultural norms between L1 and L2 societies and consequently encourage us to be aware of the importance of teaching sociopragmatic knowledge to the EFL learners.

Reliability and Content Validity of a Comprehensive Discourse Completion Test of Interlanguage Pragmatics for Academic Situations

Reliability and Content Validity of a Comprehensive Discourse Completion Test of Interlanguage Pragmatics for Academic Situations

Investigating Iranian Language Learners’ Use of Circumlocution for Culture-Specific Referents

This study investigated Iranian English language learners’ use of circumlocution for culture-specific referents. A discourse completion test (DCT) was designed in English and Persian, consisting of items dealing with Iranian culture-specific notions and distributed among 3 groups. The Persian language group received the Persian version, whereas the English language learners, divided into high and low, received the English version of the DCT. Data were analyzed according to Salazar’s (2006) categorization of circumlocution, namely description, function, superordination, location, and combination. Results revealed that the high group had a stronger tendency to use circumlocution, in general, and in terms of its categories of description, function, and combination, in particular, as compared to the low group. Furthermore, cross-linguistic analysis suggested signs of linguistic transfer with regard to circumlocution. Our findings revealed that it is not so much the familiarity of learners with cultural concepts as it is their knowledge of linguistic and communicative strategies that enables them to overcome communicative problems. Finally, this study points to the facilitative role of compensatory strategies, particularly circumlocution, as a tool to cope with communication breakdowns in an L2.

Speech Act of Thanking: A Contrastive Analysis among Iranian EFL Learners in Terms of Gender and Level of Proficiency

The speech act of thanking is one of the fairly neglected areas of research in the Iranian context. The present study seeks to investigate the ways in which this social act is expressed by young male and female EFL learners. To collect the data for this study sixty participants (30 males, 30females) were selected randomly from among the population of BA and MA students of Najafabad university and students learning English in a language institutes located in Najafabad. The major focus of this study was the role that gender and individuals’ level of proficiency might play in the application of thanking strategies. Students were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT). They were supposed to read thirteen natural situations, and react to them via expressing gratitude. In order to analyze the utterances of thanking, Cheng’s coding scheme was employed. Students’ responses were further classified according to the gender and level of proficiency. The results revealed that the females were more cautious in selecting strategies of gratitude. Individuals’ level of proficiency was also found to play an important role in the process of strategy selection.

The Effect of Explicit and Implicit Instruction through Plays on EFL Learners’ Speech Act Production

Despite the general findings that address the positive contribution of teaching pragmatic features to interlanguage pragmatic development, the question as to the most effective method is far from being resolved. Moreover, the potential of literature as a means of introducing learners into the social practices and norms of the target culture, which underlie the pragmatic competence, has not been fully explored. This study, then, set out to investigate the possible contribution of plays, as a medium of instruction, to the pragmatic development through either explicit or implicit mode of instruction. To this end, 80 English-major university students were assigned to four experimental groups: two literary and two nonliterary groups. One of the literary groups (Implicit Play) received typographically enhanced plays containing the speech acts of apology, request, and refusal and the other (Explicit Play) received the same treatment in addition to the metapragmatic instruction on the acts. The medium of instruction for the nonliterary groups were dialogs containing the given functions; they were also given either enhanced input (Implicit Dialog) or input plus metapragmatic information (Explicit Dialog). Analyses of the four groups’ performance on a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) before and after the treatment did not show any advantage for the literary medium, i.e., there was no significant difference between literary and nonliterary groups. It was rather the mode of instruction that mattered most, where explicit groups outperformed their implicit counterparts. These findings indicate that even though implicit teaching, that is, exposure to enhanced input followed by some awareness-raising tasks, is effective in pragmatic development, it cannot contribute so much to learning as can the explicit instruction.

The Effect of Explicit Instruction on Pragmatic Competence Development; Teaching Requests to EFL Learners of English

Pragmatic competence is one of the aspects of language that provides many challenges for EFL learners. L2 learners need to develop their pragmatic competence in order to use language appropriately according to the socio-cultural norms of the L2 community. And, this may be achieved through treatment they receive from their teachers. The issue explored in this study was the investigation of the effect of explicit instruction of pragmatic level on appropriate performance of request speech act across two proficiency levels with regard to two social variables of status and distance. To this end, pre-posttest design with experimental and control group was administered. Data were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The selection of requestive situations in DCT was based on two mentioned social variables. The results revealed that explicit instruction is a facilitative tool to develop L2 learners’ pragmatic competence. Moreover, it was found that L2 proficiency influence on overall appropriateness of speech acts production. The findings of the current study have some implications for teachers, text book writers and curriculum designers.

Investigating the of Explicit Instruction of Apology Speech Act on Pragmatic Development of Iranian EFL Learners

Learning a foreign language requires students to acquire both grammatical knowledge and socio-pragmatic rules of a language. Pragmatic competence as one of the most difficult aspects of language provides several challenges to L2 learners in the process of learning a foreign language. To overcome this problem, EFL teachers should find the most effective way of teaching pragmatic knowledge to their students. Accordingly, the present study investigated the effect of explicit teaching of apology speech act, as an aspect of pragmatic competence, on the Iranian EFL learners’ appropriate use of the mentioned speech act. In so doing, a total of 73 EFL students at intermediate and advanced levels participated in a pre-posttest design research with experimental and control group. Data were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The selection of apologetic situations in DCT was based on two variables of social status and social distance. The results revealed that explicit instruction was a facilitative tool that helped students use the proper apology strategies in different situations. Moreover, it was found that L2 proficiency had a significant influence on overall appropriateness of speech act production. Keywords : Explicit instruction; Apology speech act; Pragmatic competence; Iranian EFL learners

An Empirical Study on Pragmatic Transfer in Refusal Speech Act Produced by Chinese High School EFL Learners

Pragmatic competence plays a very significant role in cross-cultural communication. In Chinese high school, many English teachers focus more on lexical and syntactic aspects of English. The aspect of pragmatics, however, is relatively neglected by high school English teachers. The aim of this research is to investigate pragmatic transfer in refusal speech act made by Chinese high school EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Written DCT (Discourse Completion Test) was used for data collection. Research subjects included three groups: native Chinese speakers (NC), Chinese English learners (CE), and native English speakers (NE). The performance of three groups were compared to find out the differences of refusals made by Chinese and Americans, the characteristics of pragmatic transfer in EFL learners as well as the realtiaonship between pragmtiace transfer and L2 proficiency. Results show that 1) In terms of the frequency of semantic formulas, American speakers liked to use more direct refusal strategies and positive feelings than Chinese speakers. 2) Apparent pragmatic transfer could be found in CE1 and CE3 groups as regards to the frequency of semantic formulas. For instance, both Chinese speakers and EFL learners used address forms while no one in NE group use them. 3) A large amount of pragmatic transfer could be found in the content of refusal strategy of excuse. Statistics show that both NCs and CEs used the similar content as an excuse when giving a rejection. 4) In terms of pragmatic transfer and L2 linguisitic ability, results indicate that the overall tendency of the co-relationship is negative. More pragmatic transfer happened in CE1 group than CE3 group.

Directness vs. Indirectness: A Study of the Linguistic Choices of Persian Speakers When Giving Advice

Considering lack of research in communication style in Persian and drawing upon Tannen’s conversational style theory (1984), this study aimed at investigating the degree of indirectness in Persian by focusing on the giving-advice speech act. To this end, the data were collected through a multiple choice Discourse Completion Test (DCT), developed and designed by the researchers. The results indicated that, except for gender, other variables such as age, status, and social distance of the interlocutors had a significant effect on the linguistic choices of the participants and on their directness score. The findings, thus confirmed the efficacy of Tannen’s conversational style theory in justifying the functions of indirectness in Persian.

On the Use of Apology Strategies by Iranian EFL Learners: Do Gender and Proficiency Level Matter?

The current body of knowledge presents a great emphasize on teaching EFL learners to become pragmatically competent. Despite such an emphasis on pragmatics competence, apology strategies in English and Persian have been ignored. Moreover, it is known that EFL learners’ gender and level of proficiency affect the use of these strategies while second language communication. To this purpose, 120 EFL students from State and Azad universities of Zahedan and Zabol were selected (60 males and 60 females). Two instruments were used for collecting data including Oxford Placement Test and Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The participants were divided into three levels (pre-intermediate, intermediate, and upper-intermediate) based on their scores on the placement test, then they received DCT; they were required to provide the L2 equivalents of apology strategies depending on the communication situations. Data were tabulated and analyzed based on Olshtain and Cohen (1983) model. The results of the study showed that the most frequent used apology was IFIDs; (59%), Offer of Repair (15%), taking on Responsibility (8.3%), and Explanation or Account (7.17%).The findings further revealed that male and female respondents differed in the order of the secondary strategies they used. Females were intended to use intensifications twice more than males. Also it has been cleared that level of proficiency is a significant factor in determining the kind of the strategy an individual is intended to use. However the percentage of intensified IFIDs for males were increased by raising the level of proficiency, while decreasing happened for females by raising their level of proficiency.

A Cross-Cultural Study of Offering Advice Speech Acts by Iranian EFL Learners and English Native Speakers: Pragmatic Transfer in Focus

The purpose of the present study was to compare the speech act of offering advice as realized by Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers. The study, more specifically, attempted to find out whether there was any pragmatic transfer from Persian (L1) among Iranian EFL learners while offering advice in English. It also examined whether Iranian EFL learners’ perception of directness/indirectness in the realization of offering advice develops as a result of proficiency development. In order to achieve the objectives, a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used to collect the speech act of offering advice from among Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers. The findings indicated that Iranian EFL learners were not as balanced as native English speakers in the use of indirect use of offering advice. It was also observed that Iranian EFL learners had not acquired the pragmatic competence to offer native-like advice with regard to social power and social distance between interlocutors. The result also revealed that Iranian EFL learners and the native English speakers favored a number of similar strategies for the realization of offering advice, though there were differences in terms of frequency use of the speech acts of offering advice. Thus, this study showed evidence of pragmatics transfer.

Refusal and Politeness Strategies in Relation to Social Status: A Case of Face-threatening Act among Indonesian University Students

The present study aimed at investigating how Indonesian students refuse offers, invitations, and suggestions to persons having different social statuses. Refusal and politeness strategies were the focus of this study. The social variable involved in this study was the social status represented in lower to higher social-status (LHSS), higher to lower social-status (HLSS), and equal social-status (ESS) relationships. The data were obtained through discourse completion test (DCT) distributed to 161 students. The DCTs resulted in 2898 corpus data. Data analysis suggested that in general, the refusal strategy across social-status relationships and across initiating acts is consistently patterned, i.e. indirect strategy was more dominantly performed by the research participants. Criticizing, presenting other agenda, showing a preference, and stating self-limitation were the semantic formulas that were frequently used for refusing indirectly. Turning to politeness strategy, LHSS group used the highest number of redressive expressions, followed by HLSS and ESS groups. The politeness strategies occurring in the three groups were the use of redressive expressions and the use of wordy refusals. This study proved that social-status does not influence much to the choice of refusal strategy, but it contributes to the choice of politeness strategies.

The Investigation of Patterns of Iranian EFL learners’ Request Speech Act in Three Different Levels

Abstract. The present study is an investigation of Iranian EFL learners’ request speech act among learners with different English proficiency. This study attempts to find out the request strategies and also the degree of familiarity among three levels of participants according to Lakoff (1973) taxonomy. In order for the Iranian EFL learners’ language proficiency in the use of request speech act to be argued, the discourse completion test (DCT) was used. The DCT included six authentic request situations. The total number of students who took part in this study were 231 at three levels of MA (master of art), BA (bachelor of art), and UI (upper intermediate of institute). Based on the Z ratio test, the degree of formality and also the participants’ request strategies were analyzed. The results revealed that there are significant differences in the use of patterns among three levels of participants and also the degree of familiarity according to the levels of student changed but significantly most of learners tend to used deference taxonomy which showed medium degree of familiarity.

Investigating Politeness and Academic Background: An analytical Approach

Abstract. Within Language learners' pragmatic competence, speech acts play crucial role which is even further accentuated duet to cross cultural differences. The present study investigated the effect of academic education on acquiring native norms expressing condolences. To this end a discourse completion test (DCT) was administered to two groups of Iranian EFL learners including 30 sophomores and 30 seniors as well as 20 English native speakers (ENS). The result of the study showed significant differences among the three groups in using different condolence strategies except apologetic and sympathy expressions. As the sophomores outperformed the seniors in the appropriate use of some strategies, more attention is required to be paid to the way such strategies are dealt with in English classes.

Core Request Strategies among Jordanian Students in an Academic Setting

This study aims to investigate the pragmatics of politeness with reference to the core request strategies used by the Jordanian students in an academic setting. The respondents comprised 45 males and 5 females who are studying English language in the national university of Malaysia. The data was collected using a Discourse Completion Test, which the questionnaire consisted of 14 situations. These were combined with a rating scale to weigh the imposition for each situation. The data was analysed based on CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Project) and the theory of politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987). The results indicated that Jordanian students used a variety of strategies ranging from the most direct to indirect as the following, inquiry strategy, mind strategy, permission strategy, appreciation strategy and preparatory strategy. The preparatory strategy accounted for 335/700 or 47.86% of the total core request strategies used by Jordanian students. This strategy consider as a polite strategy and indirect. This guides us to say that the Jordanian preferred to be polite and indirect. The indirect strategy could also be attributed to their culture and religious values, whereas the use of direct strategies (the imperative) could be attributed to the closeness and the solidarity between the Jordanian students. This research could be extended to investigate the politeness phenomenon in Jordanian family and social contexts in relation to Islamic values.

Pragmatic Consciousness-raising Activities and EFL Learners’ Speech Act Performance of ‘Making Suggestions’

The present study examined the impact of pragmatic consciousness-raising activities on EFL learners’ immediate and delayed performance of suggestions, using a pretest, treatment, posttest design. Two intact classes consisting of 52 Iranian intermediate EFL learners during an intensive English course were assigned as an experimental group with 27 learners and a control group with 25 learners. A Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) was given to both groups prior to the intervention that revealed no significant difference between the groups’ pragmatic performance. The experimental group then underwent an eight-week pragmatic consciousness-raising treatment on the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features of performing suggestions. After the completion of the intervention, a posttest and, after eight weeks, a delayed posttest was given to both groups to examine the effectiveness of the PCR intervention. The analyses of the scores of the groups revealed that first, the treatment was effective on the EFL learners’ pragmatic performance and second, the treatment significantly enhanced the experimental group’s ability to produce appropriate suggestions. Also, the study showed that the trend of structure and strategy use by learners in the treatment group changed as a result of the PCR treatment from the pretest to posttest and delayed posttest conditions. This study showed that consciousness-raising at the metapragmatic level improved EFL learners’ pragmatic performance and variety of form-strategy use substantially; thus, it should be taken more seriously in L2 instruction and material development.

A Study of EFL Learners' (Meta) Pragmatic Learning through Explicit (Teacher Explanation) and Implicit (Foreign Film) Interventions: The Case of Compliment

One of the controversies regarding teaching 'pragmatics' is whether the medium of instruction would make a difference in the development of learners' pragmatic awareness and pragmatic use in both second and foreign language contexts. The present study compared the impact of two types of teaching conditions: explicit teacher explanation and implicit foreign film watching, onthe process of (meta) pragmatic learning (here, compliment) of 32Iranian female elementary EFL learners. To examine the effect of each type of instruction, the data collected through a written discourse completion test (WDCT) werelater analyzed by a paired samples t-test, and the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The results indicated that instruction of both types improved learners' awareness of compliments. Also both types of instruction were beneficial in terms of raising learners' (meta) pragmatic use. The findings provide insight into the facilitative impact of (meta) pragmatic instruction and present suggestions for EFL/ESL teachers and materials developers.

A Socio-linguistic Survey on Females’ Politeness Strategies in the Same Gender and in the Cross-Gender Relationship

Politeness is a phenomenon which is common to all cultures. Each culture has a different perception of what is polite and each language has various devices for expressing politeness. One of the important aspects of politeness which is the central focus of many studies is the polite behaviors of men and women. The focus of this study is on the politeness strategies of males and females from different aspects. The central aim of this paper is to examine the impact of gender on the politeness strategies of the speakers to see whether females speak more politely to females than to males or not. Therefore, a questionnaire was designed based on Discourse Completion Test which is originally developed for comparing different speech act realization patterns. The questionnaire was distributed to 30 females and 30 males. The result indicated that generally women speak more politely to women than to men; however, males speak more politely to females than to males. Therefore, it can be concluded that the gender of the listener is an important factor on politeness behaviors of the speakers.

The Study of Disagreement Strategies to Suggestions Used by Iranian Male and Female Learners

This study seeks to investigate the ways in which the speech act of disagreement is expressed by young male and female Persian speakers. To collect the data 100 participants (50 males, 50 females) were selected randomly from among undergraduate and graduate students of University of Isfahan and Islamic Azad University (Najafabad branch). The focus of this study was on the role that gender and power might play in the employment of strategies to mitigate the threat of disagreement. Students were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researcher. They were supposed to read nine suggestions situations, and react to them via making disagreements. Respondents were expected to disagree with three interlocutors with higher status, three peers and three with lower status. In order to analyze the utterances of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1998) was employed. The results revealed that although both males and females were concerned about the power status of interlocutors and try to apply the appropriate strategies while expressing their disagreements, females were more cautious and used different strategies from those of males.

The effect of instruction on learning refusals in EFL learners

The major aim of learning a second or foreign language is communication. In order to be a competent communicator, we must get familiar with the ingredients of speech and language. Speech acts are one of the principal elements and functional units of communication. In this realm, refusals play a key role. Due to their inherently face threatening nature, refusals are of an especially sensitive nature, and a pragmatic breakdown in this act may easily lead to unintended offence or breakdowns in communication. Refusals are also of interest due to their typically complex constructions. They are often negotiated over several terms and involve some degree of indirectness. While there are a great number of studies which examine certain speech acts, the amount of research on refusals is much more limited. The aim of this study is to investigate whether either of the instruction types, explicit vs. implicit, proves more efficient in improving pragmatic performance of Iranian EFL learners. For this reason, 45 male, military intermediate EFL learners all between19-25 years of age in a military language institute, in Tehran, Iran, were selected to participate in the study. A pretest/posttest design was adopted in this study. Having formed the three groups under investigation, (explicit, implicit and explicit-implicit) I measured all subjects’ pragmatic performance of L2 refusals through Discourse Completion Tests, DCTs. All groups were exposed to conversations from 'spectrum' English books which embody refusals. The findings proved the efficiency of explicit instruction over implicit one in increasing Iranian EFL learners' pragmatic performance.