EXPLORING SUDANESE EFL UNIVERSITY LEARNERS' DISCOURSE COMPETENCE

Abstract

This paper investigates the discourse competence of the Sudanese EFL university learners. The main objective is to evaluate and assess the students’ ability to produce unified and meaningful texts. 98 Sudanese EFL students from Faculty of different Sudanese Universities served as subjects for the study. Two instruments were employed for data collection: a questionnaire and audio-recorded conversations. Results revealed that the students had some difficulties in producing coherent and meaningful texts. The linguistic forms they used were very limited, which did not show any sophisticated use of language. Results also revealed that the students were not well-acquainted with turn-taking rules during conversation. In their responses to the questionnaires, they reported a very good command of cohesive devices in the process of producing coherent discourse events, which appeared to be incorrect. However, they were able to use simple language to expand certain points into meaningful stretches of language. In addition, some students were able to demonstrate an ability to engage into the production and interpretation of unified and meaningful discourse. Nevertheless, the analysis suggests that the students under study are still far from being competent as far as discourse competence is concerned.
Keywords: discourse competence, turn taking, conversational norm, communicative intentions, transition-relevance principle