A Comparative Analysis of the Apology Strategy between Turkish EFL Learners and English Native Speakers

The aim of this study was to compare the usage of the speech act of apology by Turkish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL Learners) and native speakers of English (L1 Learners). To this end, an Oral Discourse Completion Task (Oral DCT) including eight different situations was given to each 16 EFL and L1 learners. The questionnaire was adopted from Istifci’s research (2009) which was adapted from Tunçel (1999) and the data-sets were analyzed according to Cohen and Olshtain’s (1981) apology speech act set. The findings of this study demonstrated some similarities and differences in terms of the frequency and the type of strategies employed by the participants in those situations. The cultural background and L1 effect on non-native speakers can be one of the reasons for these differences, and the similarities between these two groups might be due to non-native speakers’ high level of English proficiency as they were studying at the department of English Language Teaching.