An investigation of the pragmatic knowledge of year one students of the School of Humanities and Law at Adama Science And Technology University: A case study
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Date
2016-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Polytechnic of Namibia, Departments of Language and Communication
Abstract
This research aimed to investigate the pragmatic competence of year one university students in the
School of Humanities and Law at Adama Science and Technology University. Pragmatic competence
requires being able to speak and behave appropriately, and being able to understand what others say
and do according to the socio-cultural context in which they are used. The data were collected from
70 students learning in six departments in the School of Humanities and Law School. Three main
instruments were used to produce these results: a discourse completion test, multiple choice discourse
completion test and observation. The data gathered were interpreted using both qualitative and
quantitative methods. The pragmatic competence level of these participants was found to be at a
middle level. Generally, from a pragmatic competence viewpoins, first year students in the School of
Humanities and Law are better at recognising what is given to them than produce the utterances
practically in the case of speech acts, cooperative and politeness principles. The researcher
recommends that students should have to practice a variety of activities in English to be pragmatically
competent in daily communication.
Description
*Lecturer, Arsi University (Ethiopia)
** Deputy director/ Associate Professor, Department of Communication, FHS, Namibia University of Science and
Technology, Windhoek, Namibia
Keywords
Pragmatic knowledge, Discourse completion test, Multiple choice discourse completion test, Pragmatic competence
Citation
Hussen, G. H., & Woldemariam, H. Z. (2016). An investigation of the pragmatic knowledge of year one students of the School of Humanities and Law at Adama Science And Technology University: A case study. NAWA Journal of Language & Communication, 10(1), 55–94.