An empirical study on the pragmatic competence of Spanish EFL learners in performing a speech act of request

Entity: Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV)

Confidenciality: No

Education area(s): Ensenyament i Adquisició de l'Anglès com a Llengua Estrangera / Segona Llengua

Title in different languages: An empirical study on the pragmatic competence of Spanish EFL learners in performing a speech act of request

Abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic dimensions of learners’ pragmatic competence. The research was carried out by means of a discourse completion test (DCT) which was given to 50 students of a Spanish secondary school. This research is an attempt to answer the following questions: 1) Is there a relationship between language proficiency and pragmatic competence? 2) Which politeness strategies do Spanish students apply to perform a request in English? 3) Are requests performed with a different degree of politeness depending on social distance and context? 4) Are there any cross-gender differences in performing a request? The findings of the study do not show any relationship between language proficiency and pragmatic competence, learners of all levels demonstrated similar ways of request realization. Spanish EFL learners gave a preference to a conventionally indirect strategy of performing a request and social variables were taken into account by the respondents. Statistical analysis of responses revealed that males and females show certain tendencies and patterns in different aspects of performing a request.

Subject: Ciències de l'educació

Academic year: 2020-2021

Language: Anglès

Work's public defense date: 2021-06-22

Subject areas: Education sciences

Student: Iendzhiievska, Mariana

Work's codirector: Oltra-Massuet, Isabel

Department: Estudis Anglesos i Alemanys

Creation date in repository: 2021-07-06

TFM credits: 11

Keywords: pragmatic competence, request, politeness strategy

Title in original language: An empirical study on the pragmatic competence of Spanish EFL learners in performing a speech act of request

Access Rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Project director: Gallego Balsà, Lídia