Algerian University Students' Pragmatic Failure when Speaking EFL: Teachers' Views and Strategies

The present study attempts to explore the reasons behind pragmatic failure among advanced EFL learners when trying to communicate orally in their classes as perceived by their teachers. Do Bejaia University BA students suffer from Pragmatic failure and fail to communicate orally through using English items to exactly and properly convey what they tend to communicate? This aim is achieved through interviewing seven teachers who teach or taught third year students of English at Bejaia University. This makes the study qualitative in nature since it is exploratory. Findings showed the majority of the students, according to the teachers' experience, do commit pragmatic errors when using English to communicate. Consequently, our informants' responses revealed a wealth of information that enabled us to determine a number of reasons behind Third Year Students' Pragmatic Failure when they communicate orally in the classroom. Moreover, to diminish this failure, our informants suggested a variety of teaching strategies that can be used in the foreign language classroom to diminish this kind of speaking deficiency at an advanced level and increase EFL learners' mastery of the appropriateness of English language use. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Cognitive - crcs under responsibility of the Author(s).