Synchronous (Onsite) Assessing Pragmatic Competence of University ESL Students in Requesting and Apologizing more

Sun, Apr 30, 12:30-12:55 Asia/Seoul

This study looked into the pragmatic competence of 320 university ESL students in making requests and apologizing in the assumption that speech acts can be taught and assessed. Using Liu's Multiple Choice Completion Test, results revealed that females scored higher than males on request and apology items. However, their scores failed to reach a 50% rate, with the discrimination and difficulty indices suggesting that the tests' difficulty was an intervening factor. Since males and females had incredibly close mean scores on request items, the difference is insignificant ruling out the assumption that females are more adept at making requests than males. There is, however, a significant difference between their mean scores in apology items. In light of these findings, it is recommended that gender's influence on pragmatic competence be examined, validity of the Multiple Choice Discourse Completion Test be assessed and strategy training be incorporated into speech acts lessons.