چکیده:
This study investigated the impact of individual differences like language proficiency, gender and age on the Iranian EFL learners‘ interlanguage pragmatics in institutional discourse especially, their capacity to recognize and to rate pragmatic and grammatical infelicities in speech act situations of request and apology. To this end, one hundred and eighty-seven EFL university students at three academic levels—undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD—participated in the study. Cross-sectional data collection was undertaken to analyze the relationship between the variables and the speech acts recognized and rated by learners at different proficiency levels. A three way between subject analyses (ANOVA) showed quantitative differences among the three groups according to individual differences. Further, in-depth analyses of test items indicated that EFL learners‘ at the three proficiency levels identified and rated grammatical errors as more serious than pragmatic errors. Results revealed qualitative, developmental information about the cognitive and individual traits followed in pragmatic awareness. One significant implication is that any account of the development of ILP should take into consideration the individual differences that will intervene between the stages of noticing and target-like production. Moreover, being linguistically competent is not only essential for the EFL learner but acquiring pragmatic competence is also important.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"candidate (TEFL), Department of Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Ali Mohammad Fazilatfar Associate Professor, Yazd University, Iran Received: October 8, 2014; Accepted: May 20, 2015 Abstract This study investigated the impact of individual differences like language proficiency, gender and age on the Iranian EFL learners‘ interlanguage pragmatics in institutional discourse especially, their capacity to recognize and to rate pragmatic and grammatical infelicities in speech act situations of request and apology.
The study of learner characteristics or individual differences such as language proficiency, gender and age has a long- standing interest in the field of ILP as factors affecting pragmatic competence (Kasper &Schmidt, 1996; Kasper & Rose, 2002; Kuriscak, 2010; Taguchi, 2013).
PURPOSE OF STUDY This study, anchored in the field of interlanguage pragmatics, explores L2 speakers‘ pragmatic awareness in relation to their individual differences like language proficiency, gender and age of the Iranian EFL learner on the speech acts of request and apology in institutional discourse.
Is there any significant difference between ID factors (language proficiency, gender and age) and recognizing and rating pragmatic and grammatical infelicities in speech act situations of request and apology in the three groups of EFL students when interacting in an unequal status?
In general, all those who had understood the situation had better ratings but in some cases, the corrected version showed clear evidence of speaker imposition on the production of requests clearly reflecting the influence of not only language proficiency but largely the effect of age, social and psychological maturity of the participant."