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.