Author(s): Nadhim Obaid Hussein, Intan Safinas Mohd Ariff Albakri, Goh Hock Seng

Abstract: The study explained English learners' pragmatics development, learners' pragmatic competence in selected speech act, and usage of request as a one of speech acts that it used in gaining pragmatic ability. The study was offered by a public curriculum lead that prioritizes the necessity for English students to develop their ability to use request effectively in cultural communication. The study aimed to explain differences in the usage of request among Iraqi male and female undergraduate EFL students. Furthermore, most English students fail to present pragmatic ability on how to use request by relating utterances to their meanings, knowing the intention of language users, and how requests are employed in specific locations. There is growing material of researches on pragmatic ability and differences in the usage of request among male and female students for EFL schoolroom teaching. However, researchers have pointed to focus on the traditional methods rather than how English students require or use request to develop the students' production in the EFL classroom. Therefore, depending on the successful results of preceding studies, the study focused on the differences in usage of request among Iraqi male and female undergraduate EFL students. The differences in the usage of request to these learners have been discussed in details of the present research.

Keywords: Pragmatics development, Differences in usage of request, and EFL students.

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.46.6