INTERNATIONAL BLACK SEA UNIVERSITY

FACULTY of Education and Humanities

PhD PROGRAM in Education Sciences

Developing Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competences in English as

Foreign Language (EFL) Students at University Language Schools (Iraqi
Case)

Elvira Koran
Extended Abstract of Ph.D. Dissertation in Education Sciences

Tbilisi, 2016

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Scientific Lia Todua
Supervisor:

Associate Professor, Doctor, at International Black Sea University

Experts (full name & academic title):

1. Associate Professor, Doctor Nikoloz Parjanadze

2. Associate Professor, Doctor Irma Mesiridze

Opponents (full name & academic title):

1. Associate Professor, Doctor Ira Danelia

2. Associate Professor, Doctor Marina Zoranian

3. Associate Professor, Doctor Alimjan Zakirov

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INTRODUCTION

Since the introduction of the term –communicative competence as a concept became the
cornerstone of modern linguistics and its subfields and acquired great importance in teaching any
foreign language. What does the notion imply?

Communicative competence is the intuitive functional knowledge and control of the principles
of language usage. As Hymes observes: “…a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not only
as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when
not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child
becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate
their accomplishment by others” (Hymes, 1972, p.277).

Sociolinguistic competence is one of the components of communicative competence alongside

linguistic, discourse and strategic competences.Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of
sociocultural rules of use, i.e. knowing how to use and respond to language appropriately. The
appropriateness depends on the setting of the communication, the topic, and the relationships among
the people communicating. Moreover, being appropriate depends on knowing what the taboos of the
other culture are, what politeness indices are used in each case, what the politically correct term
would be for some notion, how a specific attitude (authority, friendliness, courtesy, irony, etc.) is
expressed, etc.

Pragmatic competence is also one of the components of the communicative competence and is
the ability to convey the intended message, and to interpret the message intended by one’s
interlocutor.

For years English has been taught in Iraq using predominantly Grammar-Translation method,
by focusing on grammar rules, teaching them using the learners’ native language, getting the
students to memorize the rules, etc. In fact, this way of teaching was not adequate in meeting the
needs of the learners. Consequently, there were ‘speakers’ of English who knew the grammatical
rules, had extensive vocabulary but could not use the language to actually communicate.

A few years ago some attempts were made to bring changes to the EFL teaching in Iraq such
as changing the textbooks from the ones printed in 1970s into the new series published in the United

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Kingdom. The new books were more communicatively oriented; however, it did not solve all the
problems. Developing communicative competence is one of the main objectives of most methods
and approaches used in TEFL, in Iraq as well, and it is expected that the advanced speakers of
English demonstrate high levels of the competence. However, according to my personal experience
and observations, backed with some studies (Jaroszek, 2008; Mizne, 1997), many EFL learners end
up not being able to respond appropriately in certain social situations or interpret the utterances
correctly, making grammatically correct but awkward statements, unnatural responses in
communicative encounters, and translating some certain expressions from their L1.

There might be numerous reasons for this. One of them might be the teachers’ low level of
communicative competence, particularly of pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences which are
hard to learn in an EFL situation where the interaction with native speakers is either very limited or
is not present at all, and there is a small number of EFL teachers that had had a chance to live in an
English speaking country. Another reason might be the fact that language curricula can be too
overloaded with topics to cover during the course and teachers find themselves skipping the
communicative activities in the book in order to keep up with the syllabus.

The observations and experience mentioned above always made me wonder if it is possible to
teach sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences at all and if they have an impact on overall
speaking performance and this is the reason why I chose this topic as a focus of the current research.

The statement of the problem- the low level of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences is
common among students of university language school; EFL teachers possess insufficient
knowledge of the two above abilities and there exist inefficiencies and failures in teaching them to
L2 learners.

The goals of my doctoral dissertation were:

 To find/develop an efficient way of teaching and developing sociolinguistic and

pragmatic competences;
 To check and measure if the instruction of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences
has an impact on learners’ overall oral proficiency;
 To assess the efficiency of the suggested teaching model.

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 Hypothesis of the thesis

Teaching sociolinguistic competence to adult EFL learners enhances their communicative

competence in the target language, increases their overall oral proficiency in the language learnt,
assists them to overcome obstacles English as a L2 presents culturally and sociolinguistic ally,
develops in them skills of interpreting the language and skills of interacting in the target language.

Below are the research questions of this dissertation:

1. What is the concept of communicative competence?

2. Which aspects of communicative competence its main components – sociolinguistic and

pragmatic competences cover?

3. What ways and methods of teaching an FL efficiently develop sociolinguistic and pragmatic
competences in EFL students?

4. Does developing sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences affect students’ overall oral language
proficiency?

5. How much valuable modern EFL textbooks and language programs are for developing L2
learners’ socio/pragmatic competence?

6. How much EFL teachers are aware of the importance of teaching socio/pragmatic competence to
L2 learners?

7. What are effective ways of testing and assessing socio/pragmatic competence?

The methods of research in the dissertation were:

 review and analysis of existing literature on the topic

 questionnaire
 experiment
 interview
 observation
 statistical analysis of the data obtained through questionnaire surveys and
experiment

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 Quantitative Paradigm:

 a pre-test (one week before the study)

 a while-test (in the middle of the experiment)
 a post-test (immediately upon completion of the experiment)
 statistical analysis of obtained data from the experiment
 a survey for measuring teacher communicative competence
 an analysis of textbooks for the components of sociolinguistic and
pragmatic competences
Qualitative Paradigm:

 interviews of randomly selected students after the experiment

 observation and assessment of learners’ oral proficiency
 observation of classes as a part of curriculum evaluation
 observation of teachers’ communicative competence
 discussion of the curriculum with learners
 discussion and evaluation of the curriculum with/by teachers
Thus, the methods of research were both quantitative and empirical.

Urgency of the research

For decades since the advent of communicative language learning in TEFL the practice has
experienced decline and stagnation. EFL learners in most cases end their studies without
communicative competence in the target language, lacking interaction skills, intuition and
knowledge of rules of interpreting the language, unable to appropriately respond to different verbal
and non-verbal situations. Hence, the thesis is undoubtedly urgent in order to update practices of
teaching sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences properly.

Novelty of the research

One of the approaches that aim to teach communicative competence is the Communicative
Language Teaching (CLT). The studies that focus on CLT are aplenty. However, there are very few
studies that concentrate on the notion’s subcomponents, particularly, on sociolinguistic and

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pragmatic competences, probably because they deal with the cultural aspect of the language and
culture is quite abstract and sensitive topic to deal with.

The research systematized key aspects of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences for the
purpose of teaching them at pre-intermediate and intermediate levels to adult EFL learners (junior
university students). The novelty of the current study is in its approach to developing sociolinguistic
and pragmatic competences and its effect on oral proficiency in the target language which also
includes the analysis of factors affecting the process of instruction such as the curriculum, teaching
materials, and teachers.

Theoretical value of the thesis

Theoretical basis of the current research are the following:

 the notion of communicative competence by different scholars and researchers

(Bachman, 1990; Canale, 1983; Canale and Swain, 1980; CEFR, 2001; Hymes, 1972)
 teaching communicative competence, the Communicative Language Teaching
(Larsen-Freeman, 2008; Richards, 2006; Richards and Rodgers, 2001; Savignon,
2002)
 teaching sociolinguistic competence (Handford, 2002; Mizne, 1997)
 teaching pragmatic competence (Xiao-le, 2011; Ekin, 2013; Jernigan, 2007; Kasper
and Rose, 2001; Littlewood, 1981)
 testing and assessing sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competence (Byram,
1997; Underhill, 1987; Kasper and Rose, 2001)

Knowledge concerning teaching sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competence in

TEFL was systematized, new approaches and methods of developing these competences were
worked out, an effective model for teaching the two competences was offered.

Practical value of the thesis

The research with its practical outcomes will improve practice of teaching interactional skills
to adult EFL learners; will, hopefully, help teachers be oriented on real, genuine communication to

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fully equip their students with sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences so that they appropriately
conduct verbal communication in the English language.

Structure of the dissertation

The dissertation is comprised of: introduction, 4 chapters, conclusion and appendices. It

includes 25 tables and 10 figures.

CHAPTER 1: Review of Literature

This chapter deals with the following issues: definition of the concept of communicative
competence, types and models of the notion proposed by the most reknowned scholars; the two
main components of communicative competence: pragmatic competence and sociolinguistic
competences respectively, and a brief history of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).

The term communicative competence was coined by Dell Hymes (1966), he argued that a person
who could produce all kinds of grammatically correct sentences of a language without considering
the appropriateness would be institutionalized, as a counterargument to Chomsky’s (1965) definition
of linguistic competence. Communicative competence, as previously mentioned, involves not only
knowing the language code and its syntactic rules but also the knowledge of what is appropriate and
not so in any given context. In other words, it includes the knowledge of what to say to whom, or
when to remain silent, how to speak appropriately in any given situation, how to address persons of
different statuses, roles and/or gender, how to command, how to express criticism, how to accept or
reject offers, how to make requests, etc. Shortly, the term encompasses all aspects of language use,
and in some cases non-verbal means (posture, gestures, silence, etc), as well.

Definitions of the term are aplenty. We summarized the views of some of the prominent researchers
of the field regarding the basic components of the concept.
Canale and Swain in 1980 and 1983 respectively (cited in Hadley, 1993) break down
communicative competence into four parts:
(1) linguistic competence, the knowledge of and the ability to use the linguistic code, grammar,
pronunciation, and vocabulary correctly;

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(2) discourse competence, the ability to maintain coherence and cohesion between segments of
discourse;
(3) strategic competence, which is the ability to repair and work around communication gaps in his
or her knowledge of the target language, and finally,
(4) sociolinguistic competence, the ability to use language appropriately in various social situations.

Figure 1.1. The Model of Communicative Competence by Canale and Swain (1980, 1983)

Bachman (1990), proposed a new model of communicative competence which evolved from that of
Canale and Swain’s (1983). He preferred to name it communicative language ability, a broader term
which included communicative competence and language proficiency. He divided the concept into
several components such as language competence, strategic competence and psychophysiological
mechanisms. We shall focus on the language competence. Language competence, according to him,
is composed of two parts:
Organizational competence: a) grammatical competence b) textual competence
Pragmatic competence: a) illocutionary competence b) sociological competence.

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Figure 1.2. The Model of Communicative Competence by Bachman (1990)

The last model that we looked into was the CEFR 2001 model. Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment, abbreviated as CEFR or CEF is an
important document developed by the Council of Europe between 1989 and 1996 in order to
standardize language teaching, learning and assessing across Europe. In CEFR, communicative
competence is taken into consideration as knowledge. It has three basic components: language
competence, pragmatic competence and sociolinguistic competence. Language competence stands
for the knowledge of and the ability to use language resources to form well-structured
sentences/utterances.

Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge and ability to use language appropriately in any given
social context including the awareness of the politeness notions of the target language culture,
taboos, address forms, register differences, turn taking, knowing when to speak, when to remain
silent as well as the linguistic markers of dialects, accents and so on.

Pragmatic competence, the next subcomponent of the term, is subdivided into two subcompetences:
discourse and functional competences. Discourse competence is required to be able to organize
coherent and cohesive stretches of speech/written text in terms of register, logical sequencing,
rhetorical effect and thematic organization. Functional competence is concerned with using the
written or spoken discourse in communication for serving concrete functional goals.

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Figure 1. 3. The Model of Communicative Competence by the Council of Europe (2001)

The concept of communicative competence, summarized above, served as a basis for a language
teaching approach, perhaps, of the most popular one, the Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT). CLT is a rather broad approach to language teaching rather than a method with clear-cut
instructions and prescribed classroom practices. Therefore, it can be defined as a set or a list of
general principles, a few of them are written below (Larsen-Freeman, 2008):
 The target language is not just an object of study, but also a vehicle for classroom
interaction.
 Students should work with language at the discourse level, that is beyond a sentence
level. They should also acquire understanding of speech coherence and cohesion.
 Games are important, especially, when it comes to negotiating meaning and
practising communicatively.
 Students should be given a chance to express their personal opinions and ideas.
 Errors can be tolerated and are considered a natural part of developing
communication skills.
 The teacher’s role is that of a facilitator in setting up communicative activities and
that of an advisor during the activities.
 In communication, it is important to know not only what to say, but also how to say
it.
Methods preceding CLT failed to teach the language learners to actually communicate in the target
language. The need for a new approach that would teach to communicate, that is not only to know
the rules of linguistic usage, but also to be able to actually use the language, led to the emergence of

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Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Communicative language learning/teaching absorbed
the best from the most eminent theories chronologically preceding it or concurrent with this
approach of FLT/SLT such as the Direct Method, Audio-Lingual Method, and Grammar Translation
Method, etc. From social constructivist and constructivist philosophical attitudes to learning and
teaching it borrowed the focus on social and communicative skills, learner-orientedness, practice of
collaborative learning (Pishghadam & Mirzaee, 2008; Finocchiaro & Brumfit, 1983), learners’
active participation to build knowledge, utilizing the target language as a means of creating
meaning, the emphasis on sociocultural aspects of language learning (Schcolnik, Kol, & Abarbanel,
2006). From philosophies of pragmatism, progressivism, existentialism, and critical thinking
CLT/CLL was endowed with group/pair work preferences, problem-solving activities,
experimenting, adapting L2 learners’ knowledge to real-life situations, great emphasis on students’
needs and the flexibility of L2 curriculum in that respect, opportunities for self-actualization learners
are provided with in CLL classrooms, practicality of teaching methods eclipsing mere theorizing (
Massouleh and Jooneghani, 2012) and at last the most dominant trend of postmodern educational
doctrines ensuing from all the theories above - learner-centeredness - the process of language
teaching and learning being triggered by students’ interests, prospects, needs, not by a teacher and
an institution where education takes place.( Pishghadam and Mirzaee, 2008)

CHAPTER 2: Developing sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence in adult EFL learners

This chapter starts with an overview of the ways of teaching communicative competence further
narrowing the focus down to the two subcompetences: sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic
competence respectively, handled separately as independent subchapters.

Teaching of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences is impemented through various procedures

and activities. Some of them are given below:

 playing videotaped materials focusing on various elements of sociolinguistic and pragmatic

competences with native speakers of the language
 holding discussions on a range of topics with a purpose of teaching/learning and practising
the competences

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  presentations by students on topics of their interest with the purpose of teaching speech acts
such as agreeing/disagreeing politely, congratulating, etc; and techniques for building speech
coherence and cohesion
 explicit instruction of the basic speech acts such as requests, apologizing, invitations,
greetings, etc.
 role-play activities used both as means and goal of teaching/learning the competences
 teaching proverbs in order to introduce the target culture beliefs, values, lifestyle and
customs.

During the process of teaching/learning the two competences and after the process has been
completed, the level of the progress that students had made should have been tested and assessed.
Literature concerning teaching sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence clearly states what optimal
ways of testing the above competences are. These are found as most effective assessment
mechanisms:

 the Written Discourse Completion Tasks (WDCT),

 Multiple-Choice Discourse Completion Tasks (MDCT),
 Oral Discourse Completion Tasks (ODCT),
 Discourse Role Play Talks (DRPT),
 Discourse Self-Assessment Talks (DSAT),
 Role-Play self-assessments (RPSA) (Kasper and Rose, 2001, pp.301, 302).
 SOLOM (Students Oral Language Observation Matrix)
Some of the mechanisms mentioned above were used for testing the sociolinguistic and pragmatic
competences in the current study, some of them are: SOLOM, WDCT, MDCT, ODCT, DRPT,
DSAT.

CHAPTER 3: Practical Considerations of the Research

Teaching and developing sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences involves many factors such as:
evaluation of language program or curriculum in terms of its value for teaching sociolinguistic and
pragmatic competences and its renewal; selection of materials used for teaching the above
competences, i.e. textbooks, audio-visual material, etc. and their assessment; selecting the methods,
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procedures, and activities used for teaching the competences along with making decisions on the
proper ways of testing and assessing the competences; examining EFL/ESL teachers’ competences
and awareness in this respect. This chapter deals with the aforementioned factors.

Language programs, their curricula, textbooks, and eventually, classes based on them usually are the
only source of target language input the students are exposed to. As every language program serves
a certain goal, what is the way of finding out the merit of the program, identifying the extent to
which the objectives were met and the general weaknesses and strengths of the language program?
The answer, without a doubt, is evaluation. Its purpose is to improve the program or curriculum, in
terms of teaching, learning and assessment and it involves considering various alternatives when
needed, reflecting on the outcomes and making changes whenever needed. Evaluation in its broadest
sense is very much general and looks at all the aspects of a curriculum to ensure that the course is
the best possible and requires to look at the results of the course along with the planning and actual
implementation of the course. However, in fact, most of the evaluations have more narrowly
focused objectives. Carrying out an evaluation is to a large extent similar to carrying out a research.

In the light of the information given above we have evaluated our current language program in terms
of its value for teaching sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences. The instruments employed for
gathering data were interviews with teachers and learners, questionnaires, analyzing and comparing
the program syllabus with the CEFR requirements for teaching sociolinguistic and pragmatic
competences and mostly analyzing and observing classes and L2 learners.
The school syllabus was evaluated and analyzed from the following aspects:
1) General information about the course
2) Environment and context of the course
3) The content of the course and the needs of the learners, how much they coincide.
4) The teaching approach adopted.
5) The extent to which the program covers elements of sociolinguistic and pragmatic
competences.
The results of the evaluation are given in Chapter 4.
The next step was the analysis of two very popular EFL textbooks, published by world-renowned
publishing houses such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Macmillan, in terms of their value for teaching
sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences. Criteria for their selection were the following: they are

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both taught in university English language preparatory schools, their main purpose is to teach
communicative competence. The result of the analysis can be summarized as follows: both of the
textbooks can be good sources for developing sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences, yet they
cannot be totally relied on for teaching them for several reasons. One of the reasons is that both of
the textbooks do not focus enough on teaching the most common everyday speech acts such as:
apology, making requests, responding to requests, agreeing/disagreeing, etc.

Another very important factor affecting development of pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences
are teachers. But to what extent are they aware of the importance of the two aforementioned
competences, and to what extent do they themselves possess them? In order to reveal this a survey
and a test were designed to which 10 teachers responded. The results of the survey and of the test
revealed that

 the teachers believe that teaching the learners how to be communicatively competent is
crucial,

 their view of themselves in terms of their own communicative competence is quite high,
although the respondents managed to answer correctly nearly half of the questionsof the test
and thus their level of communicative competence cannot regarded as high enough.

CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH AT ISHIK UNIVERSITY

This chapter overviews the research design and methods employed to achieve the goals of the study.
The current research employed a mixed method: both quantitative and qualitative approaches in
order to obtain the necessary data.
In terms of quantitative research methods the following instruments were used:

 Pre-test
 While-test
 Post-test
 Experiment on the suggested model of teaching and developing sociolinguistic and
pragmatic competences
 Survey with teachers
With respect to qualitative method the following instruments were employed:

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  Interview with students (following the experiment)
 Observation of learners
 Observation of teachers
 Observation of classes
 Discussion of the curriculum with students
 Discussion of the curriculum with teachers

Table 4.1. Research Design

Study Objective of Study Data Collection Tool

Part 1: Curriculum Evaluation To determine the value of the 1. Discussion with students
curriculum used in Ishik 2. Discussion and
University Preparatory School evaluation of the
for teaching sociolinguistic and curriculum with teachers
pragmatic competences 3. Observation of classes
4. Analyzing the
curriculum with a
criterion checklist
Part 2: Textbook Evaluation To determine the value of the 1. Analyzing the textbooks
textbooks used in the university with a criterion checklist
language schools for teaching
sociolinguistic and pragmatic
competences

Part 3: Teacher Evaluation To determine the teachers’ level 1. Teacher Survey

of awareness of the importance 2. Brief test on
of communicative competence sociolinguistic and
and to evaluate their levels of pragmatic competences
communicative competence. for teachers as a part of
the survey above
Part 4 (a): Measuring and Testing Initially to determine the 1. Pre-test
the learners’ level of learners’ level of sociolinguistic 2. While-test
sociolinguistic and pragmatic and pragmatic competences, and 3. Post-test
competences later to measure their progress.

Part 4(b): Measuring and Testing To evaluate the learners’ level of 1. Oral Proficiency
the learners’ general oral overall oral proficiency Assessment Pre-test
proficiency in English. 2. Oral Proficiency
Assessment While-test
3. Oral Proficiency
Assessment Post-test

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Part 5: Reflections from the To get feedback from the 1. Interview with four
students students on the experiment. randomly selected
students from the
participating classes
2. In-class discussions with
students

The study was carried out in Ishik University, Preparatory School, Erbil, Iraq. There were 17
students in the experimental group and 19 in the control group, thus 36 students participated in the
experiment in total.
The first interview was held in order to find out if the students favored the experimental way of
teaching: that is, learning components of pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences in class through
various activities developed for this purpose. The purpose of the other interview was to find out the
students’ views regarding the contributions that the experiment made to their language skills.

Observation and analysis of the school’s language curriculum was carried out in order to determine
its value in terms of teaching sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences. The process involved
visiting and observing classes, discussing and evaluating the curriculum with some of the
teachers/learners, and analyzing the curriculum.

A set of activities for developing pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences was planned and
carried out during the experiment. There were two groups: control group and experimental group.
The control group was instructed in the traditional way with no extra exercises and activities, while
the experimental group received specialized instruction for teaching the competences, in addition to
the school curriculum. The experiment lasted for six months.

Analysis of the data obtained from the pre-test, while-test and post-test revealed that students who
followed the specialized curriculum with additional activities for developing pragmatic and
sociolinguistic competences, the experimental group, demonstrated a greater achievement in both
learning the competences and in oral language proficiency compared to the control group.

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Figure 4.1. Pretest, While-Test and Posttest Scores over 100 for CG and EG

80,00
72.59
70,00
62.82
60.21
55.88 57.74
60,00 55

50,00

40,00 CG
EG
30,00

20,00

10,00

0,00
Pretest While Test Posttest

Figure 4.2. Oral Proficiency Pretest, While-Test and Posttest Scores over 25 for CG and EG

25
22.4706
20
20 19.2632
17.1579 18.3158
16.9412

15
CG
10 EG

0
Pretest While-test Posttest

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The outcomes of this research are as follows:

1. When we acquire our first languages, we also acquire the sociolinguistic and
pragmatic norms with it, in other words, we produce not only grammatically correct
sentences in our mother tongue, but also sentences that are appropriate in any given
social context. In learning a foreign language we do not usually learn the latter. We
are taught grammar rules, vocabulary, pronunciation and other aspects of the language
form. In an EFL situation, a language classroom is usually the only place where

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 students are exposed to the target language and when the students are not taught
sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of the language even in class, we get speakers of
English language who are not communicatively competent, that is, speakers who
cannot use the language in real life situations.

2. Communicative competence is crucial in language teaching; however, its components

such as sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competence are usually overlooked
for different reasons. To overcome this it is important to include them in language
curriculum and allocate them a fair share within it along with grammar, vocabulary,
pronunciation, etc.

3. Pragmatic competence is the ability to convey messages with intended meaning and to
interpret messages with the intended meaning as well. The competence is subdivided
into two sub-competences: discourse and functional competences. Planning/design
competence is a part of both of the components of pragmatic competence: discourse
and functional competences respectively, which stands for the ability to order
messages according to transactional and interactional schemata. Discourse
competence is the ability to organize written and spoken text coherently and
cohesively. The ability to use written or spoken discourse in communication for
serving specific functional goals is called functional competence.
4. Sociolinguistic competence refers to the knowledge and skills involved in using the
language in an appropriate way in terms of social norms and customs. Therefore, it
deals with issues such as differences in register, dialects and accents, rules of address,
politeness, and expressions of folk-wisdom among others.
5. The approach to which the notion of communicative competence is of central
importance is the Communicative Language Teaching. CLT is a broad approach to
language teaching, a set of general principles rather than a method with clear-cut
instructions. Some of its principles are as follows:
 Language use should be authentic, as used in a real context, whenever
possible.
 Communications is both means and the ultimate goal of the classroom
instruction.

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  Being able to infer speaker’s attitude or intentions is an important part of
communicative competence.
 The target language is not only the object of study but also a medium for
classroom interaction.
 Games and other activities which focus on negotiating meaning and
communication are important.
 Students should be given a chance to express their ideas and opinions in the
target language.
 Errors are a natural part of language learning and developing communications
skills and thus can be tolerated.
 The vocabulary and the grammatical forms are also acquired through the
situational context, the function and the roles of the speakers.
 The role of the teacher is that of a facilitator in setting up communicative
activities and that of an advisor in the process of those activities.
6. The key factors in developing the students’ sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences
are the means of teaching such as a textbook, the language curriculum and the
teachers. All of the factors above were analyzed and observed in terms of their value
for teaching the competences and the following are the brief lists of conclusions
reached as a result of the analysis, the surveys and the observations.
With respect to textbooks the analysis indicated that:
 They do not cover all the necessary elements of communicative competence,
particularly, its pragmatic and sociolinguistic components, such as speech acts
for requests, invitations, complaints, apology, and politeness strategies.
 Therefore, textbooks alone are not a sufficient source for developing the
sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences.
With respect to the language curriculum:
 In it the means for developing pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences
such as activities, tasks, etc. are scarce in comparison to those that aim to
teach grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary.
 The few activities focusing on the two competences and on communicative
competence, in general, are usually omitted during instruction due to time

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 constraints or the teachers’ personal view of them as being not important
when compared to the grammar rules and other components of the linguistic
form.
With respect to EFL teachers:

 The teachers are aware of the importance of teaching the communicative

competence.
 They stated they received no formal instruction on pragmatic and
sociolinguistic competences during their studies.
 The majority may not be considered communicatively competent
themselves.
7. Based on the review of the literature the following activities and procedures were
developed to be implemented in the experiment:
 Politeness continuum activities followed by discussions of their
appropriateness.
 Videotaped materials with various social situations and featuring native
speakers.
 Discussions to ensure genuine information exchange.
 Presentations followed by teacher’s feedback to practice body language
and other means of non-verbal communication.
 Explicit instruction of speech acts followed by discussion of their
appropriateness.
 Teaching proverbs and sayings to develop culture awareness in the target
language.
 Role plays both for teaching/learning the competences and for practicing
them.
 Sharing random comments and information about the norms of the target
language culture.

8. It was hypothesized that a language curriculum enriched with elements of pragmatic

competence and sociolinguistic competence will increase the students’ level of the
competences; and will also result in the learners becoming more orally proficient

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 speakers of the target language unlike the traditional way of teaching, without using
additional activities, aimed at developing the competences, in the curriculum. The
skills and competences were measured by while-test and post-test. The quantitative
results revealed that both the control group (CG) and the experimental group (EG)
improved their mean scores on while-test and post-test compared to their mean scores
in pre-test. However, the experimental group (EG) performed significantly better than
the control group (CG) in both written and oral assessment tests. Thus, the hypothesis
was confirmed.
9. The quantitative (experiment) results supported the hypothesis that the instruction of
sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences results in the increased level of
sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence and overall oral proficiency in the target
language among L2 learners. The control group’s score increased from 55.00 (written
pre-test) and 17.15 (oral proficiency pretest), to 57.74 (written while-test) and 18.31
(oral proficiency while-test), and finally, to 60.21 (written post-test) and 19.26 (oral
proficiency post-test). While the scores of the experimental group increased from
55.88 (written pre-test) and 16.94 (oral proficiency pre-test), to 62.82 (written while-
test) and 20.00 (oral proficiency while-test), and finally, to 72.59 (written post-test)
and 22.47 (oral proficiency post-test). The final increase in the EG score yielded to
16.71 in the written tests and 5.53 in the oral proficiency tests, which is significantly
more than that of the control group which is 5.21 in written tests and 2.11 in the oral
proficiency assessment tests, thus confirming the hypothesis.
10. It was also hypothesized that teaching sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic
competence develops the learners’ skills of interpreting the language and skills of
interacting in the target language. In the post-experimental interview, the learners
stated that they became more competent in interpreting the speaker’s intended
meaning and tone such as sarcasm, irony, humor, and seriousness, than before, and
that they favored the way of experimental teaching and learning sociolinguistic and
pragmatic components of the language. Their responses indicate that the experimental
instruction:
 Involves using technology
 Makes learners more competent speakers of English

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  Increases the level of pragmatic competence in learners
 Increases the level of sociolinguistic competence in learners
 Develops their skills in interpreting the speaker’s intended meaning and tone
 Teaches grammar, pronunciation and other aspects of language in a more
stress-free way.
Thus, the qualitative results in this thesis also support the hypothesis of the research.

11. At the beginning of the experiment the students in both EG and CG were at a pre-
intermediate level and were able to make grammatically correct sentences in social
situations but they were not as competent sociolinguistically and pragmatically. Since
the beginning of the experiment the students in the EG showed enthusiasm in learning
the pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences. Starting from the first weeks of the
experiment they began to make more appropriate choices in daily speech acts such as
requests, invitations, and agreeing/disagreeing. Gradually their skills in interpreting
speaker’s intended meaning and tone improved as well which enabled them to respond
appropriately when needed.

12. The results of an experiment, interviews, observations, which were used in order to
assess the effectiveness of this model, suggest that the model is an effective way to
develop EFL learners’ sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences. It can be
recommended to apply this method not only for university level students but virtually
in any EFL program ranging from high-school to language courses provided that the
learners are in their late teens or adults and are minimum at B1 level (CEFR). Of
course, additional research might be needed in order to tailor the suggested model to
the particular case.

13. The implication of the research for EFL/ESL teachers is that they should periodically
update and enhance their sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences, and in general,
their overall communicative competence; and to impart this valuable knowledge to
their L2 students with the modern methods of TEFL/TESL in this way making their
classes truly communicative and improving their teaching outcomes by achieving
higher degree of proficiency in learners.

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List of publications related to the doctoral dissertation:
1.Koran, E. (2015). Practical Value of EFL Textbooks For Teaching Main Aspects Of
Communicative Competence (Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competences). International
Journal on New Trends in Education and Their Implications-IJONTE, Volume 6, Issue 1, p.
28-37
2.Koran, E. (2015). Awareness of Importance of Communicative Competence in TEFL
among EFL Teachers in Iraq. Proceedings of VESAL 2015 Conference 26th-27th April 2015,
Erbil, Iraq. p. 159-171
3.Koran, E. (2015). The Making Of Communicative Language Teaching -A Brief History Of
The Approach. Proceedings of IRCELT 2015 Conference 1st-2nd May, Tbilisi, Georgia. p.
237-244
4. Koran, E. (2015). Assessment of EFL learners’ sociolinguistic and pragmatic

competence and performance, Journal of Education in Black Sea Region, vol. 1, issue

1, p. 45-53

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