English Abstract
Abstract:
The thesis focused on uncovering the difference between the speech act strategies utilized by
male and female EFL language learners from both public and private school high school
students in the Sultanate of Oman. The speech acts researched in this thesis were those of
commands, refusals, and greetings. One hundred males and one hundred females from both
public and private schools were selected for each speech act investigated in the research. The
mode of data collection utilized was the use of Discourse Completion Tasks. The results of the
command DCTs demonstrated that indirect command strategies were the most common type
utilized by the majority of the EFL learners from both school systems. The results also
demonstrated that public-school students were at times unfamiliar with the requirements
elicited by social norms in specific situations. Refusals also demonstrated that most learners
preferred to communicate indirect refusals across most of the scenarios depicted. Often,
expressions of regret and negative willingness were communicated. DCT results demonstrated
that most of the learners utilized phatic questions and interjections to convey greetings. It can
be recommended that additional research be conducted across varying grade levels as well as
at university level to better gauge how varying factors can affect speech act use amongst EFL
learners.
Keywords: pragmatic competence, communication, EFL, speech act theory
