INVESTIGATING IRAQI EFL LEARNERS’ USE OF THE SPEECH ACT OF AGREEMENT

Abstract

This study investigates Iraqi EFL university learners’ use of the speech act of agreement at the pragmatic level. Additionally, the present study analyzes the productive level of the learners’ use of agreement.The study basically aims at analysing the speech act of agreement at the pragmatic level. It also aims at investigating the most common strategies used by Iraqi EFL learners to issue communicative acts of agreement at the productive level.The study hypothesizes that (1) the students’ performance of the direct strategies for showing agreement is better than the indirect onesat the productive level, and (2) the students’ performance of the explicit performative strategies for showing agreement is better than the implicit ones. To achieve the aims of the study and verify or refute its hypotheses, a sample of twenty Iraqi EFL learners from fourth year-stage in the Department of English Language, College of Education, University of Al-Qadisiya during the academic year (2014-2015) is randomly chosen to answer a questionnaire which consists of twenty different interactional situations requiring from the subjects to respond with agreement.

The study verifies the hypotheses and yields that (1) a percentage of (92%) goes to the direct strategies for showing agreement ,whereas           (8%) goes to the indirect ones, (2) a percentage of (67%) goes to the learners’ use of explicit performatives for showing agreement ,whereas only (33%) goes to the learners’ use of the implicit ones. So, the study concludes the poor use of indirect strategies and implicit performativesfor showing agreement compared to the direct strategies and the explicit performatives by the Iraqi EFL learners.