TY - JOUR ID - 3190 TI - The Impact of Individual Differences on the Interlanguage Pragmatics of Iranian EFL learners in Institutional Discourse JO - Issues in Language Teaching JA - ILT LA - en SN - 2322-3715 AU - Haji Maibodi, Ashraf AU - Fazilatfar, Ali Mohammad AD - Ph.D. candidate (TEFL), Department of Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran AD - Associate Professor, Yazd University, Iran Y1 - 2015 PY - 2015 VL - 4 IS - 1 SP - 129 EP - 99 KW - interlanguage pragmatics KW - institutional discourse KW - individual differences KW - speech acts DO - 10.22054/ilt.2015.3190 N2 - This study investigated the impact of individual differences like language proficiency, gender and age on the Iranian EFL learners interlanguage pragmatics in institutional discourse especially, their capacity to recognize and to rate pragmatic and grammatical infelicities in speech act situations of request and apology.  To this end, one hundred and eighty-seven EFL university students at three academic levels—undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD—participated in the study. Cross-sectional data collection was undertaken to analyze the relationship between the variables and the speech acts recognized and rated by learners at different proficiency levels. A three way between subject analyses (ANOVA) showed quantitative differences among the three groups according to individual differences. Further, in-depth analyses of test items indicated that EFL learners’ at the three proficiency levels identified and rated grammatical errors as more serious than pragmatic errors.  Results revealed qualitative, developmental information about the cognitive and individual traits followed in pragmatic awareness. One significant implication is that any account of the development of ILP should take into consideration the individual differences that will intervene between the stages of noticing and target like production.  Moreover, being linguistically competent is not only essential for the EFL learner but acquiring pragmatic competence is also important. UR - https://ilt.atu.ac.ir/article_3190.html L1 - https://ilt.atu.ac.ir/article_3190_c6aac7cb827e51c1d02cba5ce732eb85.pdf ER -