A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF UNIVERSITY AND INSTITUTE EFL STUDENTS' USE OF GAMBITS

The activity of speaking is conducted spontaneously and there is no much time to preplan or even arrange the speech the speaker intends to deliver. It is also known that people speak in their own style. One way to help students acquire oral proficiency is to teach gambits that support the prosocial skills being emphasized. Gambits refer to the words or phrases facilitating the flow of conversation through giving the speaker time to organize his or her thoughts, maintain or relinquish the floor, or specify the function of a particular utterance. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the different categories of gambits and their functions as used by EFL learners. The participants of the present study consisted of two upper-intermediate groups of university students (USs) and language institutes students (LISs) who got engaged in the process of talk show sessions. To count the frequency of gambit tokens and identify their functions the recorded data were analyzed using Keller and Warner's classification of conversational gambits. The results of Chi-square test revealed a significant difference between UIUSs and UILISs based on the occurrences of gambit categories. Based on the study findings, it is suggested that EFL teachers encourage the students to use conversational gambits as they are involved in the speaking activities to be able to deliver their speech effectively.