On realising the expressive speech act through the use of exclamatory sentences in written discourse

Abstract EN

In the present study, 60 third-year undergraduate students in the Department of Letters and English Language t the University of Med Seddik Ben Yahia, Jijel took part in a written discourse completion test in order to assess their knowledge about the different exclamatory forms existing in English and investigate their ability to effectively employ these forms for performing the expressive speech act in written discourse.

As the the analysis of the data revealed that the majority of students lacked the adequate knowledge pertaining to the English exclamatory forms and failed to use them to convey the intended meaning, it is recommended that EFL teachers should give importance to teaching exclamatory sentences from a pragmatic perspective when teaching writing.