Apology Strategies in the Target Language (English) of Israeli-Arab EFL College Students towards Th.docVIP

Apology Strategies in the Target Language (English) of Israeli-Arab EFL College Students towards Th 　　Sakhnin Academic Coleege for Teacher EdUcation. Israel 　　PHD English Language and Instructions and linguistics, The dapartment of English Literature, methodology and linguistics: Lecturer and Practicum General Coordinator of Sakhnin College 　　Abstract 　　This paper investigates the apology strategies used by Israeli Arab EFL college students in the target language, English toward their lecturers of English who are also Arab native speakers. Analysis of the apology strategies were based on strategies developed by a number of researchers (Owen, 1983; Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984; Trasborg, 1987; Hussein and Hamouri, 1998). It is based on 42 apology e-mails sent by the students to three Arab lectures of English in the college. These e-mails werewritten in English. 240 apology utterances were performed in these messages. Frequencies and percentages are considered. The findings of the study reveal that the main apology strategy used by the students isexpression of apology. This strategy consists of three sub-strategies: Expression of regret, offer of apology and request for forgiveness. The next frequent apology strategy used is Acknowledgement of responsibility which includes five sub-categories: explicit acknowledgement, expression of lack of intent, expression of self-deficiency, expression of embarrassment and explicit acceptance of the blame. Other strategies such as expression of concern for the hearer, offer of repair, explanation of account and others were also used, but in low frequencies. 　　Keywords: speech acts; apology strategies; Israeli Arab EFL students; Target language (TL). 　　INTRODUCTION 　　Apologiesare speech acts. Holmes (1990) defined them as social acts that carry an effective content. It is aimed at maintaining good relations between the interlocutors. Many researchers have investigated the speech act of apology in the recent years (Blom- Kula