TEACHERS' CRITERIA VERSUS STUDENTS' CRITERIA IN SPEECH ACT RATING

Testing and assessment issues concerning second language pragmatic competence are unchartered territories in the world of interlanguage pragmatics. However, tests which have been employed to explore learners' sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities have overwhelmingly drawn upon the speech act framework. This study investigates the criteria of two sets of Iranian EFL raters in evaluating the appropriateness of the speech acts of apology. To this end, using a five-point rating scale, eighty four advanced Iranian EFL students and thirty eight Iranian English teachers assessed the appropriateness of apology speech acts for ten different scenarios. The raters were required to write down their own criteria and reasoning for choosing a particular point on the scale. Then in the data analysis procedure, the collected data were thematically analyzed through content analysis to come up with the possible underlying themes and patterns as the dominant criteria and rationale for the two groups of raters. The analyzed data revealed both similarities and differences in the operating criteria of teachers and students in evaluating appropriateness of the speech acts. The results of this study indicated that the students' orientation for the evaluation of appropriateness of the speech acts was more linguistically-oriented while the teachers were more focused upon both linguistic the non-linguistic criteria for the evaluation of appropriateness.