EFL Arab students’ apology strategies in relation to formality and informality of the context

• Arab EFL students’ awareness and performance of apologies in formal and informal social contexts were explored.
• The most frequent apology strategy was apology with Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID).
• Apologies without IFID were respectively the second most common strategies.
• Generally, the Arab EFL students performed well in apologizing based on the type of each social context.
• The students used more than one strategy to perform apology especially in a formal context.