فرهاد مظلوم زوارق

Despite some studies about the differences and similarities of using apology strategies between native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners, bilinguals (Persian-Turkish) learners have been largely ignored. Also, different choices in their different situations on apology strategies have not been compared much. Therefore, the current research tries to compare using these strategies in various situations between Iranian EFL learners who are all bilingual (Persian-Turkish) and native English speakers. For this purpose, a questionnaire (DCT) was distributed among 47 native speakers abroad and 47 EFL students from two Iranian provinces to evaluate their similarities and differences. Also, in order to make the obtained results more accurate, the Cambridge Michigan test was taken from Iranian students to check their language proficiency level to choose those with high level of language proficiency in this study. Sugimoto's classification was used to check the relationship between these two groups. The results of the DCT questionnaire show that four subsets of primary strategies and two subsets of secondary strategies are used, while seldom-used strategies are not used in any of the two groups. Based on the chi-square test, except for two cases, similar answers were received in the rest of the situations of the questionnaire, and there is a significant relationship between the two groups in the use of apology strategies. The findings show that bilingual (Persian-Turkish) students behaved similar to native English speakers in most cases, which can be attributed to their high level of language proficiency.