Emirati University students’ use of the request speech act in Arabic in email communication with faculty

Abstract

Students’ academic performance is greatly affected by their communication skills, a significant one of which is email writing. Due to technological advances and the distance education imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a great deal of communication between students and professors is in the form of email communication. Students’ inattention to the rules of this particular genre may result in face-threatening situations. Prompted by the lack of research on university students’ utilization of the request speech act in Arabic emails, this study investigated 96 Emirati first-year students’ request behaviors in Arabic in communication with university professors. Data were collected using a discourse-completion task and an evaluation form filled in by two judges. Results showed that the students mostly produced a direct request speech act. However, a significant number of them failed to follow the expected discourse structure often omitting the subject line, not thanking or writing their names at the end. The judges thought the emails were generally respectful. However, they felt they were not appropriate, which was mainly caused by the frequent mistakes with spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary. There were also instances of informal language use and grammatical errors. Based on these results, recommendations are provided focusing on awareness-raising and practice activities.