فاطمه میری

Knowledge of speech acts and their functions are basic components of pragmatics and the request speech act plays a crucial part in everyday interactions. This study aimed to investigate whether native speakers of English make any differences utilizing the request expressions “would you like” and “would you mind”, their collocations in both spoken and academic contexts and the functional differences caused by the co-text. To this end, the data was retrieved from Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The results revealed that such expressions in the spoken corpus were used more frequently in the transactional context with equal status and as interactional-oriented. However, in the academic corpus, the same expressions were used more frequently in the pedagogical context with the high-low status and as both interactional-oriented and task-oriented. The expression "would you like" was mostly used to give information, whereas "would you mind" was usually used to request an action. These expressions were not used for the purpose of imposition in any of the two contexts. The study revealed that the collocations didn't affect the function of such requests. In fact, it was the collocating words that changed due to the pragmatic functions and the objectives of the speakers. The findings might contribute to understanding of the variations which matter between the request expressions. Teachers and learners might gain insights into how and when they are used and which collocations are more frequent so as to focus more carefully on them and make informed and proper decisions within pedagogical settings.

Although discrete research on pragmatic and grammatical awareness is well-visited in second language acquisition, the exploration and assessment of these two variables in tandem in standardized language proficiency tests has not garnered thick literature. On this ground, this study attempted to examine the correlation of both pragmatic and grammatical awareness with IELTS speaking Part 3. To this end, 120 homogenized Uzbek IELTS-taken applicants were asked to fill out pragmatic and grammatical awareness questionnaire adopted from Albertson (2011) followed by IELTS speaking Part 3 administration in order to obtain a correlation between pragmatic awareness and IELTS speaking Part 3 as well as grammatical awareness and IELTS speaking Part 3, respectively. The results of data analyses via running Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that both pragmatic awareness and grammatical awareness were significantly correlated with IELTS speaking Part 3. The findings imply that building on these two types of awareness would probably help learners increase their performance on IELTS speaking Part 3. Additionally, the students’ awareness-raising on pragmatic aspect of language in IELTS speaking Part 3 upon which interaction is based could probably convince the examiners on IELTS speaking venues that they are fully aware of pragmatic items and their conveyed message would not be misunderstood.