Speech act of request in teaching/learning Turkish as a foreign language

In this study, native Turkish speakers and students learning Turkish as a foreign language in B1 level have been compared in terms of their use of requests. In doing so, a Discourse Completion Test consisting of 12 conditions was applied and the answers were classified for directness and indirectness. In addition, the emotion expressions chosen for each case were evaluated according to the preference of strategies. In these aspects, the study is a quantitative research. Data were analyzed descriptively through SPSS program. One-way ANOVA and post hoc tests were used to determine whether there were statistically significant differences. 84 students participated in the study. 42 of the participants were Turkish students attending the preparatory program of the University of Turkish Aeronautical Association. The other participants were foreign students at B1 level who studied Turkish at Ahmet Yesevi University and Gazi University TOMER. Participants comprise of 20 Kazakhs, 15 Afghans, 4 Arabs, 1 Chinese, 1 Bosniak and 1 Tajik. As a result of the study, various similarities and differences were found between native Turkish speakers and students learning Turkish as a foreign language. Significant differences were found in 4 of 12 cases in Discourse Completion Test. While the participants used conventional indirect strategy the most, it was observed that the Afghan participants applied to the non-conventional indirect strategy more than the other groups. On the other hand, Kazakh participants used want statements more than the others. Key Words Speech act, request, cross-cultural, emotion, Turkish as a foreign language