The Use of Request Strategies in an Academic Setting

Abstract

The study compares requests produced by Omani and American students. It examines the differences and similarities found in the types of requests produced in a Discourse Completion Test and the frequency of strategies employed for each speech act used. The results show that Omani students (non-native speakers) use fewer indirect request strategies in English than their American counterparts (native speakers). Linguistic differences are attributed to inadequate linguistic abilities among Omani students. This deficiency is anticipated to create problems such as the underuse of the past auxiliaries like could as opposed to present tense modals like can; the misuse of would; and the overuse of the lexical downgrader please in comparison to the underuse of external modifiers such as grounders, disarmers and sweeteners. Past auxiliaries were also found to be underused by Omanis due to the non-existence of these verbal forms in the Arabic language.