The Pragmatic Competence of English Language Teachers in Secondary Schools in Iringa Rural, Tanzania: The Case of Requests

Abstract

This paper investigated English language teachers ' pragmaticcompetence in making requests. The study adopted a descriptive casestudyresearch design. Eight teachers from two schools were chosen andstudied. The data were collected using Discourse Completion Tasks(DCTs), stimulated recall and classroom observation, and were analysedfollowing the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Pattern (CCSARP).The findings indicate that, to varying degrees, the studied Englishlanguage teachers made requests using direct strategies or conventionaland non-conventional indirect strategies, although they employed directstrategies more than conventional and non-conventional indirectstrategies. However, the use of conventional and non-conventionalindirect strategies was not in line with the social variables of relativepower, distance and degree of imposition. It is therefore suggested thatEnglish language teachers should be orientated to using requeststrategies appropriately, with respect to such social variables.