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Includes references (43-46 p.)

'ABSTRACT Pragmatics has become one of the more relevant topics in the field of second language teaching, and it picked up quite a paste. Many studies focus on or are concerned about the ways and methods of introducing and incorporating pragmatics to teaching the English language. There is still a big concern, and that is the level of the students\' pragmatic competence of EFL learners because without knowing their precise level it would be very challenging to introduce or to incorporate pragmatics into their classes. So in this study, this issue or concern is addressed. One hundred students from two schools participated in this study, 46 students from Kalar Private Technical Institute and 54 students from Garmian University, and the ratio of the gender was 57 females, 43 males. This study tries to answer some crucial questions, namely knowing the level of pragmatic competence of Kurdish (Iraqi) EFL learners, and the role of gender, school type in the students\' comprehension and understanding of speech act, implicature and situational routines. And through the findings of this study, we can better understand pragmatic competence levels and the role of gender, school type on the Kurdish (Iraqi) EFL learners. According to the results of the pragmatics test, we can see that the level of the learners is low; also we can see that gender factor does not affect learning pragmatics, as both genders performed similarly in the tests. Regarding the school type, there was a difference as those who were from a public school did better in the implicature and speech act sections of the pragmatic test. Keywords: pragmatic competence, gender, school type. Kurdish EFL learners.'