The Pragmatic Transfer of Requestive Speech Acts By Arab and Turkish Efl Learners at the Preparatory School

Authors : Akbar Rahimi ALISHAH, Samira Shakir HAMMOODI

Pages : 107-121

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Publication Date : 2018-04-20

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The present study is an endeavor to reveal whether Arab and Turkish EFL learners transfer their first language requesting strategies into English language. For this purpose, a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), (MCQ), and an oral interview task were adopted to verify pragmatic transfer from Arabic into English and from Turkish into English, if there was any. Three groups were participated in this study, where the first two groups included Arab EFL learners living in Turkey and the third group included Turkish EFL learners. Three versions of written DCTs were used, an Arabic version, an English version, and a Turkish one. The Arabic version was distributed to the two groups of high and low proficiency Arab EFL students prior to distributing the English one and the Turkish version was distributed to the Turkish students prior to distributing the English one. Qualitative data gained from the Turkish and Arab EFL learners’ responses to the DCTs and the oral interview were graded, and the results were quantified to analyze them descriptively by using the Turkish and Arab EFL learners’ responses as a baseline.
Keywords : Speech act, Pragmatic transfer, Interlanguage pragmatics, Pragmatic failure, Cross cultural pragmatics