The Effect of Education on the Socio-Pragmatic Competence: A study on Greeting Forms of English and Farsi

This study intends to investigate the effect of education on the acquisition of socio-pragmatic competence (SPC). To this purpose, 25 Iranian senior students and 15 Native English speakers (NES) fill Farsi and English multiple choice discourse completion test respectively expressing the forms they use in their daily greeting communication. The result of statistical analysis showed that only in visiting friend situation both EFL and NES are the same in using similar greeting forms. Finally it became clear that although Iranian learners of English received the advance instruction of English, they kept their own structure of socio-pragmatic competence.