The Effect of Age on Iraqi EFL Learners' Use of English Politeness Formulas

Abstract

Politeness formulas, though they are very important in our daily interactions, have not been studied thoroughly by researchers, and only few papers have been written about this term. This study attempts to investigate the effect of age on the use of English politeness formulas by Iraqi EFL learners.For the sake of achieving this aim, the study hypothesizes that Iraqi EFI learners face difficulties in using English politeness formulas as an effect of the cultural differences between the two languages, and this difficulty varies according to their gender and age. A questionnaire is used to test out the hypotheses of the studys which is the source of the data. In the questionnaire, (50) learners from the English Department, College of Education, Tikrit University participate to achieve two tasks: a production task in which they are given situations where they have to take a role, and a recognition task in which certain situations are provided and the learners choose the correct formulas. The data collected from the questionnaire is analyzed according to Scarcella (1979). The results of this study indicate that EFL Iraqi learners meet difficulties in using English politeness formulas as a result of the cultural differences. It is also concluded that age does not affect performance while gender does.