An investigation of the Saudi EFL teachers’ pragmatic awareness

Abstract

This study aims to investigate Saudi teachers’ pragmatic awareness and the impact of their gender and qualification. A lack of appropriate knowledge and pragmatic activities may limit students’ pragmatic growth in the target language. Thus far, most pragmatic research has focused on issues concerning learners’ pragmatic competence, with only a few studies focusing on teachers’ pragmatic competence, particularly in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. A total of 86 EFL teachers from Saudi public schools participated in this study. The questionnaire created by Ivanova (2018) was used to collect data for this study. The findings indicated that even though some teachers did not respond or provided irrelevant or incorrect examples of speech acts, Saudi EFL teachers have a relatively high level of awareness in general, and teachers’ qualifications and gender have no significant effect on pragmatic awareness, with female teachers having slightly higher pragmatic awareness than male teachers, and master’s degree holders having slightly higher pragmatic awareness than bachelor’s degree holders. This suggests that, while individual characteristics, such as gender and degree, have no apparent effect on awareness, teachers should be aware of their own pragmatic competence to develop their students’ pragmatic competence.