A Comparative Study of the Complaint Strategies among Iranian EFL and ESL Students – The Study of the Effect of Length of Residence and the Amount of Contact

The purpose of this study was to investigate the pragmatic transfer Iranian EFL and ESL learners of English showed when complaining in English. The study aimed to find out if there exists any relationship between the amount of contact with English and pragmatic competence of both EFL and ESL groups as well as the relationship between the duration of stay in English-speaking countries and the pragmatic competence of complaining in the ESL group, living and studying abroad for some years. For this purpose, the data were gathered from four groups- twenty Iranian native speakers of Farsi and twenty English native speakers of English, as the baseline groups, as well as twenty EFL and twenty ESL learners, as the interlanguage data groups. The data were elicited through a personal information form and a DCT in which they were asked to answer six imaginative situations including complaint-required situations. The DCT data were examined to see to what extent the time spent with English and the duration of stay in target countries and the pragmatic competence of EFL and ESL respondents were related. The findings revealed no significant relationship between the amount of contact, the time spent abroad and the pragmatic competence of Iranian EFL and ESL learners.