The Impact of Teacher Complaint Response Strategies on Turkish EFL Students’ Email Replies: Perceptions and Linguistic Analysis

Students’ academic engagement is significantly influenced by their interactions with faculty. This is a particular consideration for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in English-medium instruction (EMI) contexts, where their pragmatic competence (PC) may still be developing. A key dimension of PC is the use of speech acts. When confronted with high academic demands, students likely employ the complaint speech act to express their concerns. In response, faculty may adopt complaint response strategies (CRSs) that fall along a stance continuum, ranging from commiserating to contradicting. This study investigates Turkish EFL students’ responses to such CRSs in email communication. It explores how teachers’ response styles influence students’ perceptions, the content and linguistic features of their responses, and message length. A scenario-based survey was used to collect data from 57 first-year engineering students. Data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results revealed that students perceived commiserating responses as more supportive and motivating, while contradicting responses elicited greater responsibility acceptance and self-reflection. Despite some variation in tone and content, students’ use of linguistic features remained consistent across conditions. Email length also did not differ significantly. The findings highlight the importance of empathetic teacher communication in promoting both student engagement and a sense of responsibility. Implications for EMI pedagogy and teacher training are discussed.