Request Strategies: Cross-Sectional Study of Iranian EFL Learners and Australian Native Speakers

Abstract

This study was a cross-sectional investigation into the request strategies used by Iranian learners of English as a Foreign Language and Australian native speakers of English. The sample involved 96 BA and MA Persian students and 10 native speakers of English. A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used to generate data related to the request strategies used by each group. Selection of request situations in DCT was based on two social factors of relative power and social distance. Although results revealed pragmatic development, particularly in the movement from direct to conventionally indirect strategies on the part of EFL learners, learners with higher proficiency displayed overuse of indirect type of requesting; whereas the native group was characterized by the more balanced use of this strategy. The lower proficiency learners, on the other hand, overused the most direct strategy type. In terms of the influence of the social variables, the findings of this research revealed that as far as social power is concerned EFL learners display closer performance to native speakers. But considering social distance, it seems that Iranian EFL learners have not acquired sufficient sociopragmatic knowledge to display proper social behavior.

The Effect of Language Learning Experience on the Appropriate Use of Speech Act ‘Request’

“…Nearly the articles conducted about the speech act revealed the effect of proficiency on the use of specific kind of speech act (Trosborg, 1995;Hill, 1997;Felix-Brasdefer, 2007;Taguchi, 2011;& Jalilifar, 2009). The belief is that with increasing proficiency the appropriate use of certain kind of speech acts increase and get closer to the target language native's norms.…”

The Speech Act of Request in the ESL Classroom

“…Brown and Levinson's (1987) Politeness Theory highlights three main factors that are believed to be universally applicable in various contexts and cultural settings viz social distance, relative power and rate of imposition. There may be other context specific factors which may emerge as highlighted by Jalilifar (2009). These underlying factors may even differ from one culture to another.…”

“…The study of speech acts such as disagreements (Rees-Miller 2000) compliments (Galato 2003) and requests (Jalilifar 2009, Elmianvari & Kheirabadi 2013 have been more popular in the field of pragmatics as they are more commonly found in everyday utterances of common learners. However, the speech act of request was chosen for this study as it is one of the most produced utterances in the second language classroom setting.…”

“…Studying requests put forward by students is also crucial to teachers as it can help them understand utterances produced by students and respond appropriately. Most studies on the speech act of requests are done by analysing the written requests of students (Najeeb, Maros & Mohd Nor 2012, Woodfield & EconomidouKogetsidis 2010, Al-Ali & Alawneh 2010, Jalilifar 2009, Biesenbach-Lucas 2007. This study will, however, analyse naturally occurring classroom talk to identify the types of requests made by students before comparing it to written DCTs.…”

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

“…A thorough review of the related literature (Bachman, 1990;Bachman & Palmer, 2010;Birjandi & Rezaei, 2010;Cohen, 2007;Farashaiyan & Amirkhiz, 2011;Farhady, 1980;Farnia & Suleiman, 2009;Hassaskhah & Ebrahimi, 2015;House & Kasper, 1987;Hudson, Detmer, & Brown, 1995;Jalilifar, 2009;Jianda, 2006Jianda, , 2007Karatza, 2009;Moradkhan & Jalayer, 2010;Rafieyan, Majid, Bin, & Eng, 2013;Rafieyan, Sharafi-Nejad, Khavari, & Eng, 2014;Roever, 2005;Rose, 2000;Shimazu, 1989;Soler & Martinez-Flor, 2008;Taghizade-Mahani, 2012;Usó-Juan & Martínez-Flor, 2015;Ymashita, 1996) reveals that attempts have been made to construct MDCTs in various situational contexts. Increasing reliability and validity of MDCT also has been a matter of concern for the test developers (Jianda, 2006).…”