1Burhan Saleh Sulaiman & 2Paiman Zorab Azeez
1,2 Department of English Language, Koya University, Kurdistan Region, Iraq.
paiman.zorab@koyauniversity.org, burhan.saleh@koyauniversity.org
ABSTRACT
Grammar rules are essential for acquiring knowledge of any language. In the learning process, the difficult respect is the pragmatic principle of language, which brings about several challenges to language learners. Teachers should look for the most influential approach in instructing pragmatic skills to cope with this issue. To do so, the study aimed to investigate the effect of direct teaching of the apology type of speech act on the Kurdish students’ development in apology strategies. A total number of 73 Kurdish students took part in a pretest, treatment, and posttest teaching that was divided into four groups. Two experimental groups of intermediate and advanced levels and two control groups of intermediate and advanced levels. To collect the data, a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) composed of ten open-ended apology discourse scenarios was used. To select the apologetic situations, social and distance status variables were employed. The results showed that direct teaching was effective in facilitating and developing apology strategies and pragmatic competence for Kurdish EFL learners in various contexts.
Keywords: Direct teaching, Apology speech act, Apologetic strategies, Pragmatic competence, Pragmatic expectation, Kurdish students