Suggestion strategies as employed by Sudanese EFL students

Abstract EN

This study investigates Sudanese EFL students' realization and performance of the speech act of suggestion through comparing the strategies and linguistic structures used by Sudanese EFL students and native speakers of English.

It considers the effect of a number of factors, such as interlocutors' social status and social distance, gender and proficiency level on the choice of strategies.

The data are collected through the Discourse Complement Test (DCT) which consists of 6 hypothetical situations.

Ninety four under-graduates EFL students as the first group, thirty two graduate students as the second group (i.

e.

the advanced learner group), and twenty English native speakers as the reference group have been chosen to be the subjects of this study.

The data analysis reveals significant differences between the performance of Sudanese EFL students and English native speakers.

It is found that in giving suggestions, Sudanese graduate and under-graduate EFL students have adopted more direct strategies than English native speakers, while the conventionally indirect strategies have been preferred by the later group.

Key Words: Speech act, Suggestion, Sudanese EFL students.