No abstract

The Challenge It is well established that reading comprehension is one of the quintessential skills in language learning that is multidimensional and entails a various set of linguistic and nonlinguistic constituents and skills (Chen, 2018). However, there is still a lacuna in the literature on the relative contribution of these elements to reading across proficiency levels. The present paper attempts to fill the void on the relative role of linguistic knowledge components by including subcomponents of vocabulary and grammar constructs.

Pragmatic competence consists of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic components. The choice of pragmalinguistic strategies aligned with sociopragmatic norms may vary based on situational, cultural, and individual variables. The relationship between these important aspects of second language pragmatic competence, however, is underdeveloped in the literature. To fill this gap, the present paper is aimed at investigating the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic variations of the Iranian EFL learners from different proficiency levels. A written discourse completion task (WDCT) was adopted for collecting data. Data were analyzed using the coding categories for apologies developed in the previous benchmark studies. The findings of the study provided evidence showing both sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic development across the levels of language proficiency. The findings can be used for the development of pragmatics-focused materials in L2 and pragmatics instruction.