Iranian EFL Learners Request Strategies Preferences across Proficiency Levels and Gender

Abstract

Pragmatic speech acts such as invitations, refusals, suggestions, apologies and requests are significant components of communicative competence. The speech act of requesting is of particular interest to second language acquisition researchers. This study aims to examine Iranian EFL learners request preferences. It also tries to uncover whether gender and proficiency levels play a role in the pragmatic competence of the learners. The participants of the study were 34 EFL learners in a private language institute in Iran. The data were collected through a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) having 15 request situations that were translated into Persian and a Proficiency test. The results of the study revealed that linguistic proficiency level and gender are effective in choice of request strategies. It was revealed that females preferred indirect requests in their performances. Besides, directness decreased as linguistic proficiency level increased which means that indirectness increases with linguistic proficiency. The findings of the study can be helpful for EFL teachers and instructors with regard to teaching pragmatic in EFL context.