Learners’ Productions of Speech Acts : The Case of Moroccan students of English at the University

Morocco, ID LLCE2015-194

Since the publication of Hymes’s paper “on communicative competence” (1972), it has been recognized that learning a language is not solely limited to its grammatical component, but to its socio-pragmatic elements as well. However, it has been observed that in the Moroccan university context, learners tend to develop a limited knowledge in the area of pragmatics, mainly speech acts. This aspect of language is of critical importance in language teaching and learning, given its utility in day to day encounters with native speakers. This paper is meant to study Moroccan university learners’ of English performance of different speech acts. Its main purpose is to unveil the students’ deficiencies in this area of pragmatics, with the ultimate objective of suggesting ways to ameliorate the teaching and learning of speech acts at the university level.