The objective of this study was to investigate the request and apology strategies of Kurdish EFL undergraduate students (KEFLUS) and their linguistic and pragmatic competence in making requests and apologies. The participants were 83 KEFLUS and 14 native speakers of English (NSE). A Discourse Completion Task (DCT) and rating scale developed by the researcher were used to collect the data. After the responses were collected, the data were coded and analysed according to the taxonomy of BlumKulka et al. (1989) Cross-Cultural Speech Acts Realization Patterns (CCSARP) for request and the Olshtain and Cohen (1983) taxonomy for apology. Furthermore, the collected data were rated by four researchers. The results of the study revealed the differences in responses between the KEFLUS and NSE groups and between the state and private universities. However, no significant difference was found between KEFLUS males and females. Moreover, the KEFLUS responses were in general pragmatically and structurally appropriate.

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ABSTRACT:The present study investigated to what extent Turkish-speaking upper-intermediate level second language learners of English can comprehend and produce implicatures. To this end, 90 freshman students completed a multiple-choice test, and responded to 12 situations in a discourse completion task (DCT). The participants had a moderately high level of success in the implicature comprehension test. Although the learners had considerable difficulty in comprehending understated negative criticism items, which flout the maxim of quantity, they were highly competent in comprehending relevance implicatures. The rates of success in quality and manner implicature comprehension were moderate. The participants were more successful in understanding particularized implicatures when compared to generalized implicatures. As for the production data, 70.6% of the responses contained implicatures. The mostly widely flouted maxim was the quality maxim for the purposes of creating sarcasm and achieving face management and politeness. The maxim of quality was flouted when responding to bad news or expressing anger in an unpleasant situation. When trying to express their opinions about the quality of a particular thing/person, participants tended to flout the maxim of quantity in order to avoid expressing their opinions directly, and making the referent disappointed. The participants did not tend to make use of implicatures in the case of requesting. The participants who realized requests via implicatures flouted the quantity maxim mostly. A significant correlation was not documented between participants' pragmatic production and comprehension. Keywords: pragmatic competence, implicatures, second language learning ÖZ: Bu çalışmada orta-üstü düzey İngilizce konuşanların hedef dilde sezdirileri anlama ve üretme becerileri araştırılmıştır. Bir devlet üniversitesinde İngilizce Öğretmenliği birinci sınıf öğrencisi olan 90 katılımcının hedef dilde sezdirileri anlama düzeyleri çoktan-seçmeli bir ölçek aracılığıyla ölçülmüştür. Aynı katılımcı grubuna yazılı bir söylem tamamlama ölçeği verilerek, 12 durum için belirli söz eylemlerini sezdiri yoluyla gerçekleştirmeleri istenmiştir. Sezdirileri anlama ölçeğinde katılımcılar orta düzeyde başarı göstermiştir. Katılımcılar nicelik kuralının ihlal edildiği, olumsuz eleştiri içeren sezdiri çeşitlerini anlamada güçlük çekerken bağıntı kuralının ihlal edildiği sezdirileri anlamada oldukça başarılı olmuştur. Nitelik ve tarz kurallarının ihlalini içeren sezdirilerin anlaşılmasında ise katılımcılar orta düzeyde başarı göstermiştir. Genelleştirilmiş sezdirilerin anlaşılma düzeyinin özelleştirilmiş sezdirilere oranla daha düşük olduğu görülmüştür. Hedef dilde sezdiri üretme ölçeğine verilen yanıtların %70.6'sının sezdiri içerdiği belirlenmiştir. En yaygın üretilen tür, alayla karışık iğneleme içeren nitelik sezdirileri olmuştur. Nitelik kuralı ayrıca istenmeyen durumlarda tepki ve kızgınlığı dile getirme amacıyla ihlal edilmiştir. Katılımcıların eleştiri söz eylemini gerçekleştirirken düşüncelerini d...

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Today students need to take responsibility for their own learning and be autonomous more than thirty years ago. Learner autonomy, which makes the learners more effective, has been given attention in the language learning process over the last three decades. The goal of this study is to explore Iraqi English teachers’ beliefs about learner autonomy. The participants of the study consist of 116 EFL teachers (87 males and 29 females) from different academic (Diploma, Bachelor, Master and PhD) and teaching (intermediate, secondary and university) levels. A questionnaire developed by Borg & AlBusaidi (2012) is used to elicit the required data. Data is analyzed by using SPSS version 22. The results of the study reveal that EFL teachers have a positive attitude to some extent towards learner autonomy. The results of the study and their pedagogical implications are discussed, and recommendations for further research are provided.