The Pragmatic Knowledge of Turkish EFL Students in Using Certain Request Strategies

Abstract

This study investigates the pragmatic knowledge of Turkish EFL students in using certain request strategies. Data were collected through a type of DCT, open itemverbal response only production questionnaire, as categorized by Kasper (2000) from 40 undergraduate students, studying at the Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Education, Middle East Technical University, whose ages range from 18 to 20. The data collected from the questionnaires were statistically analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results showed that the EFL students in this study had the linguistic means in order to operate pragmatically in various contexts while requesting. However, their success in the use of the request strategies in situations requiring certain level of politeness was relatively not satisfactory. In the conclusion part, it is argued that the results can be closely related with learning contexts and textbook contents and some suggestions are put forward regarding the issu