Developing EFL Students' Pragmatic Competence through Speaking Skill

Abstract

The present study aims at investigating the importance of developing the pragmatic competence on the EFL students speaking skill to third year LMD students of English as a Foreign Language at the department of English, University of Biskra. In order to check this correlation, we have hypothesized that If teachers give an equal importance for developing both of the linguistic and the pragmatic aspects of English language, then students will not have a difficulty in communication, and that If teachers are aware of the difficulties that students would face in communication, then they will focus on the pragmatic competences. To verify the validity of these hypotheses, we have conducted the main investigation that is divided into two kinds of questionnaire; the students’ questionnaire and the teachers’ questionnaire. The first one is composed of twenty-two questions and administered to fifty one third year (LMD) English students at the department of English, University of Biskra. The second questionnaire consists of nineteen questions given to eight oral expression teachers at the same department during the academic year 2012. The second instrument that was used is an experimental study to the third year LMD students in the oral expression class in order to find out whether they know how to use English language in different social situations or not. The discussion of the results has shown that oral expression teachers do not give much focus on developing the EFL students’ pragmatic competence through speaking skill therefore they commit pragmatic divergence.