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Title: An investigation of the Saudi EFL teachers’ pragmatic awareness

 

Vol. 11(1), 2023, pp. 66-82.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.46687/JJTJ7006  

 

Author: Abdullah Ahmed Zughaibi

About the author: Abdullah Zughaibi, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Jazan University in Saudi Arabia. He has been the dean of the English Language Institute (ELI) at Jazan University for three years. Dr. Abdullah published several papers and a chapter in a book and participated in various Applied Linguistics and Pragmatics conferences. His research interests and publications are on Pragmatics, L2 learning and teaching, and learners’ autonomy.

e-mail: azughaibi@jazanu.edu.sa ;                 

             aazughaibi@gmail.com   

ORCID iD:  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5077-5128

                  

Citation (APA style): Zughaibi, А. А. (2023). An investigation of the Saudi EFL teachers’ pragmatic awareness. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT, 11(1), 66-82. https://doi.org/10.46687/JJTJ7006.

 

Link: https://silc.fhn-shu.com/issues/2023-1/SILC_2023_Vol_11_Issue_1_066-082_17.pdf

 

Abstract: This study aims to investigate Saudi teachers’ pragmatic awareness and the impact of their gender and qualification. A lack of appropriate knowledge and pragmatic activities may limit students’ pragmatic growth in the target language. Thus far, most pragmatic research has focused on issues concerning learners’ pragmatic competence, with only a few studies focusing on teachers’ pragmatic competence, particularly in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. A total of 86 EFL teachers from Saudi public schools participated in this study. The questionnaire created by Ivanova (2018) was used to collect data for this study. The findings indicated that even though some teachers did not respond or provided irrelevant or incorrect examples of speech acts, Saudi EFL teachers have a relatively high level of awareness in general, and teachers’ qualifications and gender have no significant effect on pragmatic awareness, with female teachers having slightly higher pragmatic awareness than male teachers, and master’s degree holders having slightly higher pragmatic awareness than bachelor’s degree holders. This suggests that, while individual characteristics, such as gender and degree, have no apparent effect on awareness, teachers should be aware of their own pragmatic competence to develop their students’ pragmatic competence.

Keywords: pragmatic awareness, pragmatic competence, EFL teachers, language learning

 

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