A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE USE OF REFUSAL STRATEGIES BETWEEN IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS AND NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH

This study aimed to investigate the perception of native speakers of Persian, Iranian EFL learners, and native speakers of English of how they would make refusals in different situations. In doing so, a discourse completion test (DCT) which was in the form of a questionnaire and introducing some natural situations was used and given to the participants of the study. The DCT consisted of three requests, three invitations, three suggestions, and three offers. Responses of English native speakers were considered as a base of speech act sets. The responses were compared with non-native speakersʹ responses to determine which semantic formulas and refusal strategies were used. In order to analyze the data of this study a chi-square test was used. The results showed that according to statistical analysis of the data of this study, there are some significant differences among the participants (ENS, PNS, and EFLL) of the study in using refusals strategies in making refusals and there is a significance difference between social status and gender of people and their directness and indirectness in making refusals.