On the Effect of Task-based language Teaching on the Pragmatic Competence (Illocutionary Force) of the Iranian Male and Female Students

The present research study, based on a systematic procedure, investigates the impact of the illocu- tionary and locutionary forces of the pragmatic competence on the Iranian male and female language teaching juniors. By virtue of gaining a persuasive and forceful ultimate goal of this study 400 lan- guage teaching Iranian juniors attended this study. Phase 1 witnessed a T-test where 60 males and females of the subjects were randomly classified into two-30 subject groups. The experimental group was assigned tasks based on illocutionary act measures where the communicative force of the utter- ances was taken into account and the control group was given tasks based on locutionary act where the well-formedness of the utterances was considered for the period of twelve sessions. As the post- test five native like Iranian Ph.D holders in linguistics who had full command of pragmatic compe- tence in general and speech act theory in particular were hired to interview all the 60 subjects to un- ravel their differences. The acquired result revealed that the experimental group was much more versed in pragmatic competence regarding the illocutionary force of speech act theory. Phase 2 was allotted to a correlational study. The researcher intended to look into the degree of correlation be- tween the locutionary and the illocutionary forces. The scores of 30 subjects in illocutionary experi- mental group were correlated with those of the locutionary control group. The coefficient of correla- tion demonstrated that there was a negligible positive correlation between the two variables. In phase 3 a 2x2 factorial design was employed where the120 male and female participants were subjected to the locutionary and illocutionary act. According to the observed F it was proved that the females out- performed the male subjects in both locutionary and illocutionary acts.