Özet:

The ability to adjust one's speech to fit the situation in which it is said is called sociolinguistic competence, without this ability, even the most perfectly grammatical utterances can convey a meaning entirely different from that which the speaker intended .This study will focus on sociolinguistic competence because it seems to be the most neglected aspect among the four categories of communicative competence in foreign language curriculum. The ‘de-emphasized’ status of this competence in educational practice has to do with the fact that it is closely related to the sociocultural part of acquiring a second language . For nonnative speakers, the misunderstandings they are often faced within the cross-cultural realization of communicative acts usually arise from their failure in appropriate use of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence .Sociolinguistic competence refers to the understanding ,or organization of the principles of language use that are determined by the features of the specific language use context ; it enables us to present language functions in ways that are appropriate to that context without attempting to identify and discuss the features of the language use circumstances . Post-graduate students (PGS) in four Iraqi universities find it difficult to communicate freely in the target language .They Find difficulties in using English for communication when engaged in authentic communicative situations, they often lack some of the vocabulary or language items they need to get their meaning across. This study aims at measuring Sociolinguistic Competence of EFL Post Graduate Students and finding out whether there is significant differences between male and female students' performance which leads to the level of sociolinguistics competence , and finding out whether there is significant differences between male and female students' performance which leads to the level of sociolinguistics competence . It is hypothesized that :1 .EFL Post - Graduate Students do not acquire high level of the sociolinguistic competence . 2 .There is no significant difference between male and female students in this domain.3- There are no significant differences among the four universities (Baghdad , Tikrit , Babel ,and Salahddin A test has been constructed , its validity and reliability have been found and using a statistical means, Batchman (1990) model is used also to measure this competence. It has been concluded that post-graduate students have low level of sociolinguistic competence. Babel and Tikrit Universities have got the highest results. There is a significant difference between male and female PGS in the four Iraqi universities on the behalf of male students. This study recommends more emphasis should be directed to the sociolinguistic competence and practicing it inside language classroom to increase multicultural communication.

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