Requesting in English as a Lingua Franca: Proficiency Effects in Stay Abroad

This article reports on an empirical study designed to assess pragmatic awareness and production of 104 nonnative speakers of English of two different proficiency levels (intermediate and advanced). The paper first frames the study providing information on the users of English as a Lingua Franca (EL...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Vilar Beltrán, Elina
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2013
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/22129
Acceso en línea:http://institucional.us.es/revistas/elia/13/art_4.pdf
http://hdl.handle.net/11441/22129
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Petición
Hablante no nativo
Competencia lingüística
Lengua franca
Competencia comunicativa
Inglés
Pragmatic awareness and production
requests
English nonnative speakers
proficiency
Descripción
Sumario:This article reports on an empirical study designed to assess pragmatic awareness and production of 104 nonnative speakers of English of two different proficiency levels (intermediate and advanced). The paper first frames the study providing information on the users of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), a new communicative competence model that takes into account lingua franca users, and studies dealing with ELF topics. This is followed by the description of the methodology employed and a discussion of the results. The findings confirm that proficiency level has effects on the awareness and production of appropriate and correct request acts and request act modifiers. Statistical analyses show that advanced learners produce more appropriate and accurate requests than intermediate participants, which was also the case for most internal request modifiers. Advanced learners also appear to be better at assessing pragmatic and grammatical failure of some types of request strategies.