Pragmatics of English Speech Acts: Compliments Used by Macedonian Learners

Abstract

This study investigated the pragmatic knowledge and competence of the Macedonian learners of English, i.e. Macedonian high school English students’ views on and perceptions of pragmatics, their pragmatic competence in the speech act of complimenting, and the language learning strategies employed in the process of acquiring pragmatic knowledge.Although “student-oriented” and “evaluation-oriented”, the teaching methods currently used do not sufficiently develop students’ communicative competence in the process of English teaching and learning. Many students lack pragmatic knowledge of how to use the foreign language in specific settings and how to interpret certain utterances used by native speakers of the other language.Despite all the efforts made to improve the English language education in Macedonia, yet greater emphasis should be put on students’ linguistic and pragmatic competence in the English teaching and learning process. This area is the focus of the current study that analyses the English speech act of complimenting and its use by the Macedonian learners of English.