Investigating the Use of the Speech Act of Invitation by Iraqi EFL Non-Departmental Students

Abstract

This study is concerned with investigating Iraqi EFL non-departmental students' use of the speech act of invitation at the pragmatic level in terms of recognition and production. First, a theoretical survey is presented about invitation. Then, a model of invitation strategies is adopted for the analysis. The Department of Dentistry, Al-Mustaqbal University College during the academic year 2019-2020 was a representative of the data analyzed in this research. A test is carried out on 20 third stage undergraduate students whose native language is Arabic and the analysis is done afterwards. The study employs multiple choice question and a discourse completion task as instruments for collecting the data. The results show that the performance of the learners on the recognition part is questionable as they are unable to differentiate invitation from other attitudes. On the production part, the learners used some strategies more than others in addition to using a strategy which is not found in the model.