An investigation on the sociolinguistic competence of English language teacher trainees: A comparative study on native and non-native English speakers

The aim of the present study was to investigate sociolinguistic abilities of Turkish EFL learners who studied in 4th grade of ELT departments in comparison to native speakers of English. 50 Turkish and 25 American students participated in the study. The study was carried out in three aspects: (1) The differences of refusal and complaint strategies , (2) the differences in modality markers and (3) how their performances were perceived by a native interlocutor for the same social situations with two variables of interlocutors: higher ? equal, familiar ? unfamiliar. The data were collected qualitatively and quantitatively by means of two tools; a DCT involving 6-paired situations with two interlocutors, in total 12 items, separated as 3 refusal and 3 complaint situations was used for the qualitative analysis. The responses of all participants for each pair were coded, analysed and compared in SPSS program. Quantitative analysis was done by a communicative rating scale. An American rater graded Turkish students? responses according to the 5-point scale to assess their performances in sociocultural, sociolinguistic and register appropriateness criteria. The results showed that Turkish EFL learners could use a range of speech act strategies and modality markers, but they deviate from native speakers in content. Also it was seen that they lacked some sociolinguistic and sociocultural knowledge that might cause sociopragmatic failure.