Delving into refusal speech act: A case of Vietnamese students seeking English Bachelor degrees

TranThiThanhSang TV pdf Delving into refusal speech act A case of Vietnamese students seeking English Bachelor degrees Student Tran Thi Thanh Sang Supervisor Professor Clare Furneaux Dissertation subm[.]

Delving into refusal speech act: A case of Vietnamese students

seeking English Bachelor degrees

Student: Tran Thi Thanh Sang Supervisor: Professor Clare Furneaux

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MA in TESOL School of Literature and Languages, University of Reading

Word count: 14,658

September, 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 3

2.1 Introduction 3

2.2 Interlanguage pragmatic competence 3

2.2.1 Pragmatic knowledge 3

2.2.2 Pragmatic competence 7

2.3 Speech act theory 7

2.4 Politeness theory 10

2.5 Refusal speech act 13

2.6 Research on refusals 15

2.6.1 Studies outside Vietnamese context 15

2.6.2 Studies inside Vietnamese context 18

2.7 Challenges of making refusals in English for Vietnamese/Asian students 20

2.8 Proposed research questions 21

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 22

3.1 Introduction 22

3.2 The research setting 22

3.3 The participants 22

3.4 Research instrument 23

3.5 Data collection procedures 26

3.6 Ethical consideration 26

CHAPTER 4: ANALYZING COLLECTED DATA 27

4.1 Introduction 27

4.2 Analyzing student participant’s refusal strategies 27

4.2.1 Summarizing frequency distribution of refusal strategies 27

4.2.2 Findings regarding refusals made to requests 29

4.2.5 Findings regarding refusals made to suggestions 33

4.3 Textbooks evaluation 35

4.4 Teacher’s opinion of integration of pragmatic approach into their classroom 38

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION 41

5.1 Introduction 41

5.2 Research question 1: 41

5.3 Research question 2: 44

5.4 Research question 3 46

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 49

6.1 Conclusion 49

6.2 Limitations 50

6.3 Further study 50

BIBLIOGRAPHY 52

APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1: Taxonomy of refusal strategies (Beebe et al., 1990, p.37) 62

APPENDIX 2: ETHIC FORM 65

APPENDIX 3: STUDENTS’ QUESTIONNAIRES 69

APPENDIX 4: INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRES 73

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

A-TABLE

Table 1: Pragmatic knowledge components (Adapted from Purpura, 2004, p.91) 6

Table 2: Classification of Speech acts (Cohen, 1996) 10

Table 3: Variable distribution in twelve situations 25

Table 4: An example of a typical scenario 26

Table 5: Frequency distribution of refusal speech act in the Solutions series 35

Table 6: Frequency distribution of refusal strategies in the Solutions series 38

B-FIGURE Figure 1: Language knowledge in Bachman and Palmer’s model (1996, p.68) 4

Figure 2: Leech’s distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopramatics 6

Figure 3: Three levels of a speech act (Austin, 1962) 9

Figure 4: Sociological variables influences FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.313) 12

Figure 5: Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.316) 12

Figure 6: Overall frequency distributions of refusal strategies 28

Figure 7: Overall frequency distribution of each refusal strategy 29

Figure 8: Frequency distributions of refusal strategies made to requests 29

Figure 9: Frequency distributions of refusal strategies made to invitations 31

Figure 10: Frequency distributions of refusal strategies made to offers 32

Figure 11: Frequency distributions of refusal strategies made to suggestions 33

i

ABSTRACT

This study set out to recast the issue of making refusal by Vietnamese university senior level English students through their responses in a Written Discourse Complete Task/Test (henceforth WDCT) which comprises of twelve situations (3 requests, 3 invitations, 3 offers and 3 suggestions) Additionally, the treatment of refusal speech act

in the Solutions series (Falla & Davies, 2008) is critically examined to determine if they enable FL learners to achieve their pragmatic competence in the target language Both the students’ responses and the presentation of refusal speech act in the Solutions series are evaluated following the two theoretical frameworks, i.e Refusal Speech Act and Politeness Theory of Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990) and Brown and Levinson (1987) respectively Interviews with English teachers who have taught these students and employed the textbooks were conducted to further investigate their approach of incorporating refusal strategies into their classroom

The study found that Vietnamese students in the study could make refusals appropriately in English by using different strategies to soften the refusals Native language influenced on their choice of language The Solutions series do not overlook refusal speech act regarding frequency, the presentation and introduction of refusal strategies The teacher participants have a good understanding of pragmatic knowledge Their approach of teaching pragmatics is appropriate to some certain circumstances However, it was investigated that they did not have great impact on these students’ choice of refusal strategies