COMPARISION OF KOREAN ESL LEARNERS’ WITH NATIVE SPEAKERS’ APOLOGIES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHERS

Year 2010, Volume: 2010 Issue: 1, 1 - 19, 01.03.2010

Yıldız Turgut

Abstract

For language learners, pragmatic competence is important to communicate appropriately with native speakers. Acquiring pragmatic competence takes longer time for language learners. In that sense, this present study compares Korean ESL learners’ apologies to native speakers of English. Data collected through Written Discourse Completion Tests applied to 22 Korean ESL learners and 54 American students. The data was coded based on the speech act sets for apologies. Then the data analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively focusing on age, gender, English language proficiency level and cultural variables. The findings indicate that for Korean language learners time spent in the US and English language learning are significant in terms of using apologies more in line with native behavior. Use of intensifiers changes according to gender-females tend to use more- and cultural background and language proficiency level-Americans tend to use more compared to Koreans. Implications for ELT have been discussed throughout the paper.

Keywords

speech acts, ELT, apologies, pragmatics

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