An Analysis Of Apologies Made By Chinese EFL Learners

This study describes an investigation of the speech act of apology made by intermediate English learners and advanced English learners from two angles: production and perception. Two hundred students'responses are analyzed in this study. The results show that pragmatic production develops hand in hand with overall English proficiency to some extent, whereas pragmatic perception is related to proficiency more weakly. A correlation analysis suggests that the learners'production and perception are not significantly related in the speech act of apology. One possible explanation for the phenomenon is that in making such familiar speech acts as apology, those two groups have already been beyond the point where language proficiency is the key variable for making a speech act, while sociopragmatic factors have become the main prerequisites in order to produce and perceive the most appropriate speech acts. Neither production nor perception has developed fully from the perspective of the native speaker judges, probably because of the paucity of input containing the speech act in the Chinese EFL context. These results suggest that EFL learners need opportunities to receive input containing English speech acts and to practice both perceiving and producing speech acts in order to be pragmatically competent in L2 English. The low level of pragmatic development also suggested that the inclusion of lower proficiency is important when investigating EFL learners'pragmatic abilities.