The investigation of pragmatic competence levels of tertiary level Turkish efl students with a special focus to their usage patterns of expressions of gratitude

Abstract

The purpose of the present study has been to find out the gratitude strategies used by Turkish speaking EFL learners in certain situations. For this purpose, three Discourse completion Tasks (DCTs) designed, and completed by two groups of participants including 80 tertiary level Turkish EFL learners, and 70 non-native European speakers of English at tertiary level were taken as the samples for the study. Additionally, interview data were compiled through 44 Turkish speaking participants who also attended the completion of DCTs in order to gain more insight into the results of the DCTs. The findings showed divergences and similarities between not only the research groups but also the responses of the Turkish speaking participants in Turkish and English regarding the choice and frequency of thanking strategies. The results also indicated that the Turkish speaking EFL learners at tertiary level resorted to the speech act of thanking in a different manner compared to non-native European speakers of English. Another finding was that Turkish speaking EFL learners differed in their thanking strategies because of the incompetence in their English proficiency.