شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

Sociolinguistic Competence can be defined simply as: knowing and understanding how to speak given the circumstances you are in. Elaborately, when we speak our native language, we never think about who we are talking to, or how we should say something. Our words typically flash and come naturally, and we don’t even realize all the complexities that go into the process. Although we often do not actively think about this process, it is a essential part of effective communication. Second language learners must learn how to perform and comprehend language in various sociolinguistic contexts, considering factors such as the status of participants, the purposes behind interactions, and the norms or conventions of interactions.” That is what language learners must be taught and given opportunities to practice in real situations. This mainly includes, but not limitedly: expressing attitude or emotion, understanding formal vs. informal and knowing/recognizing common slang or idiomatic expressions. The study of sociolinguistics involves the interaction of both language and society, in acquiring a new language, second language (L2) learners, in addition to learning structural, functional, and discourse rules, have to internalize sociolinguistic rules that can guide them in the choice of appropriate forms. Research has vividly shown that even advanced learners‟ communicative behavior, due to a lack of sociolinguistic competence, may often deviate from L2 conventions so as to cause many cross-cultural misunderstandings. The aim of this study is to shed the light on sociolinguistic competence and to identify the EFL college student’s knowledge of it in a way to support their target language proficiency. This research is a descriptive one where a sample of (30) students at the college of Education /IbnRushd, University of Baghdad for the academic year 2014-2015 are randomly chosen from fourth year classes to respond to the questionnaire constructed by the researcher to identify the college students‟ knowledge of sociolinguistic competence. The questionnaire was validated by being reviewed and adjusted according to the remarks provided by a number of experts in the field. The students‟ responses have been statistically analyzed and rejected positively the null hypothesis to capture the importance of students‟ knowledge of sociolinguistic competence in favour of better language proficiency on the students part. (Published Abstract)