Insights into receptive processing of authentic foreign discourse by EFL learners

Abstract

Learning a foreign language nowadays is not just remembering words and grammar rules; it is a process of penetration into the hidden meaning of the message. Context plays a major role in the success of oral comprehension. This investigation looks at the issue of perception of authentic speech from the perspective of discourse approach. The authors study various factors influencing EFL learners’ comprehension of authentic English American speech. Our observations and empirical data have led us to believe that there are some major difficulties of comprehension in the level of discourse which include not only unknown words but also lack of cultural awareness and pragmatic competence. Problems arise when the learners cannot infer the right meaning of the utterance because their perception stays in the vocabulary or grammar level without integrating both linguistic and extra linguistic features of the context of communication.