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Rating EFL Learners' Production of Request and Complaint by Native and Nonnative English Speaking Teachers

Khanlarzadeh, Neda | 2015

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 47377 (31)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Languages and Linguistics Center
  6. Advisor(s): Alemi, Minoo
  7. Abstract:
  8. Among different subfields of pragmatics some have been analyzed meticulously and some seem to be in a more stringent need of investigation. ILP rating is a novel branch of pragmatics studies through which various aspects and process of rating the L2 learners’ pragmatics knowledge are analyzed. Unfortunately, despite its great impact on learning and teaching second language, investigation of L2 raters’ behaviors and criteria has not been explored much. Problems in the process of ILP rating are very critical, as they can easily undermine the fairness of the test. Therefore, this study attempted to analyze overall 100 EFL teachers’ rating criteria (50 Iranian nonnative and 50 American native) regarding the speech acts of request and complaint whilst assessing 12 Iranian EFL learners’ responses on twelve situations of video prompted DCTs. After the content analysis of raters’ comments on EFL learners’ responses nine criteria concerning the request speech act and eleven criteria about complaint speech act were extracted. The criteria that both native and nonnative raters employed during request rating were: politeness, query preparatory and softeners, explanation comments, formality and relationship, exemplification, linguistic appropriateness, directness and indirectness, register, and authenticity and cultural comments, and the set of criteria that they used during complaint rating were: logical reasoning and explanation, politeness, linguistic appropriacy, exemplification, interlocutors relationship, register choice, formality, degree of intensity, cultural accommodations, degree of directness, and “fluency and authenticity. As a result of t-test analysis of the raters’ rating scores and chi-square analysis of raters’ comments on video prompted DCTs, it has been revealed that both groups of raters were inconsistent in their use of the mentioned criteria across all situations and there was a significant difference between them in their criteria using pattern and rating scores. It has also been proved that learning both pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics aspects of language seemed important for EFL raters; therefore, EFL learners should pay attention to them. Moreover, the result of the present study highlights the necessity of L2 pragmatics teaching courses for nonnative teachers whose assigned scores of EFL learners’ pragmatic productions were not convergent and EFL learners who have not been exposed to any L2 pragmatics information and did not respond to the pragmatic tests appropriately
  9. Keywords:
  10. Rating ; Speech Acts ; Interlanguage Pragmatics ; Request Speech Acts ; Complaint Speech Acts

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