an american and vietnamese cross-cultural study on teachers' criticisms to students' presentations = nghiên cứu giao văn hóa việt mỹ về cách thức phê bình của giáo viên đối với các bài thuyết trình của sinh viên

VŨ THÙY LINH AN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON TEACHERS’ CRITICISMS TO STUDENTS’ PRESENTATIONS NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO VĂN HÓA VIỆT MỸ VỀ CÁCH THỨC PHÊ BÌNH CỦA GIÁO VIÊN ĐỐI

M.A MINOR THESIS

Major: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

HANOI, 10/2009

VŨ THÙY LINH

AN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE

CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON TEACHERS’ CRITICISMS

TO STUDENTS’ PRESENTATIONS

NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO VĂN HÓA VIỆT MỸ VỀ CÁCH THỨC PHÊ BÌNH CỦA GIÁO VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI CÁC BÀI THUYỂT TRÌNH CỦA SINH VIÊN

M.A MINOR THESIS

Major: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor: Assoc Prof VÕ ĐẠI QUANG (PhD)

HANOI, 10/2009

3.1 Criticizing strategies used by American and Vietnamese teachers 20

d Consequences 23

3.2 Similarities and differences in using direct and indirect strategies 29

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 RATIONALE

The past decade has witnessed the rapid development of pragmatics and growing attention on speech acts such as apology, request, and compliment However, the speech act of criticism remains to be an area less explored by scholars at home and abroad

According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 62), criticism is a face-threatening act that threatens the hearer’s positive face, which is “the want of every individual that his wants be desirable to at least some others” Therefore, the speaker tends to adopt various strategies to save face for the one being criticized However, cultural differences could result in variance in criticism strategy preferences and an interlocutor may inappropriately choose some criticism strategies according to his own culture with another interlocutor from different culture, thus leading misunderstanding in the cross-cultural communication

The fact that criticism plays a very important in teaching and learning is undeniable This is because students may learn from mistakes of one another as well as from the comments that they receive Teachers, however, form different cultures have different ways of giving criticisms to their students’ presentations Some may be open and direct in their criticisms while others may resort to indirect strategies Thus, misusing this may have counter-productive effects on the relationships between the interlocutors

All the aforementioned reasons have encouraged us to carry out a study entitled

“An American and Vietnamese Cross – Cultural Study on Teachers’ Criticisms to

Students’ Presentations” We do this study with the hope of raising the awareness of

cross-cultural differences in American and Vietnamese ways of criticizing in general and criticizing students’ presentations in particular

2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

The study aims to make a comparison in the ways of criticizing students’ presentations between American and Vietnamese teachers

To reach this aim, two objectives need to be achieved First, the study examines what politeness strategies are employed by American and Vietnamese teachers when they give criticisms to their students’ presentations Second, the study also analyzes the

similarities and differences between two groups of teachers in the use of politeness

strategies in their criticism to students’ presentations

3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The main focus of this study is the teachers’ politeness strategies in giving criticisms to students’ presentation Not everything to criticism is studied but merely negative criticisms about presentations in classroom

To serve the purpose of the research, the target population is identified as American and Vietnamese college teachers who teach third-year students This selection ensures that the students of these teachers are required to make frequent oral presentations during their terms and the teachers have experience in giving comments on students’ presentations

4 METHODOLOGY

Since the main purpose of the study is to compare the ways of criticizing students’ presentations between American and Vietnamese teachers; therefore, describing, comparing and contrastive analysis prove be the best candidates of all Thus, the thesis will

be oriented in the following steps:

- do the questionnaire

- identify strategies of criticism of both English and Vietnamese teachers in the source of questionnaire result

- classify the criticisms into sub-strategies

- describe the criticisms in each language to find out the typical features of each strategies

sub analyze, compare, and contrast criticizing strategies based on the cultural features

in the two languages to point out the basic similarities and differences in this aspect

- reach the comments and conclusions on the subject under research

5 DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The study is composed of three parts:

Part I: INTRODUCTION

Introduction describes the study’s rationale, aims, objectives, scope and methodology

Part II: DEVELOPMENT

There are three chapters in this part

Chapter 1: Literature Review lays the theoretical foundation for the research by

discussing (1) theory of speech act, (2) speech act of criticizing, (3) directness and indirectness in language and culture, and (4) an overview of presentation and criteria for a good presentation

Chapter 2: Study details the methods that have been used and the procedures that

have been followed by the researcher

Chapter 3: Results and Discussion presents the findings from the survey and

discuss them in detail

Part III: CONCLUSION

This part ends the study by summarizing its main points as well as points out the limitations and suggestions for further studies

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 SPEECH ATCS

The notion of speech acts dates back the British philosopher of language John Austin

(1962) In his very influential work, ‘How to do things with words’, Austin defines speech

acts as the actions performed in saying something or actions performed using language In fact, when speaking, we perform certain linguistic actions such as giving reports, making statement, asking questions, giving warnings, making promises and so on In other words speech acts are all the acts we perform through speaking – all the things we do when we speak Austin (1962) distinguished between the three kinds of acts, namely locutionary,

illocutionary and perlocutionary then Of these, a locutionary act is the act of saying something in the full sense of “say” An illocutionary act is the one of using the sentence to perform a particular function; and a perlocutionary act is the one of producing some kinds

of effects that are produced by means of saying something Among above three kinds of

acts, the illocutionary act which Austin later termed “speech act” is the core interest of

Austin as well as of other pragmatists (Levinson, 1983)

Meanwhile, Searle (1974) argue that each type of illocutionary acts requires certain expected or appropriate called felicity conditions These conditions relate to the beliefs and attitudes of the Speaker and the Hearer and to their mutual understanding of the use of the linguistic devices for information What is more, Searle (1965), cited by Minh, (2005: 11) emphasized that Austin’s felicity conditions are not only dimensions in which utterances can go wrong but they are also constitutive of the various illocutionary forces, and therefore, can differentiate illocutionary acts from one another Searle classified those felicity conditions into four kinds, which are:

(1) Preparatory conditions: the person performing the speech acts has to have quality

to do so

(2) Sincerity conditions: the speech act must be performed in a sincere manner

(3) Propositional context conditions: The utterance must have exact content

(4) Essential conditions: The speech act has to be executed in the correct manner

(Searle, 1979: 44)

Both Austin and Searle have paved the way to research into linguistic functions instead of linguistic forms as is often observed in earlier linguistic studies They also have tried to classify speech acts and put them under categories

Austin (1962) categorizes five classes of speech ants as:

(1) Verdictives: “the giving of the verdict”, e.g assess, appraise

(2) Exercitives: “exercising of powers, rights, or influence”, e.g command, direct (3) Commissives: “committing the speaker”, e.g promise, propose

(4) Behavitives: “reaction to other people’s behavior and fortunes”, e.g apology,

thank

(5) Expositives: “expounding of views, the conducting or arguments and the classifying

of usages and of references”, e.g accept, agree

However, this classification is criticized for basing mainly on the performative verb through which a speech act is expressed and having no clear or consistent principle or set

of principles based on which Austin constructed his taxonomy Thus, many speech acts according to his classification, may belong to two different categories

Searle (1979), finding fault with Austin’s, suggests his own classification of speech acts These speech acts are further described as follows:

(1) Representatives: representing states of affairs (e.g.: assertions, conclusion, or

one person tries to figure out how another is using a particular utterance [ ] what we see

in both Austin and Searle is a recognition that people use language to achieve a variety of objectives

Wardhaugh (1992: 287)

Another approach to distinguish types of speech acts can be made on the relationship between structure and function (Yule, 1996: 54) He divided speech acts into direct speech act and indirect act and defines,

“Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have

a direct speech acts Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, we have an indirect speech act.”

The utterances “Turn on the fan, please”, for example, the speaker (S) has directly

requested the hearer (H) to turn on the fan The syntactic structure of this utterance indicates a straightforward request in English Nevertheless, the same request can be made

in a more tacit, indirect manner to achieve the same result; S may say something like “It’s

hot in here”

1.2 SPEECH ACT OF CRITICIZING

In real-life communication, the speech act of criticizing – as in the case of complaining has proven to be composed of different speech acts and of great risk of causing face threatening act It is, therefore, suggested the studies on criticizing as a speech act across cultures should be carried out with the hope of contributing to the successful cross-cultural communication

The speech act of criticizing has been studied by different researchers such as House and Kasper (1981), Tracy, van Dusen, and Robison (1987), Tracy and Eisenberg (1990), Wajnryb( 1993, 1995) and Toplak and Katz(2000) and others

Tracy, et al (1987) investigated the characteristics of criticisms by people from different cultural backgrounds and distinguished “good” from “bad” criticisms According

to him, a good criticism is one that displays a positive language and manner, suggests specific changes and possible critic, states justified and explicated reasons for criticizing and does not violate the relationship between interlocutions and is accurate Supporting that point of view, Wajnrub(1993) holds “an effective criticism must be kept simple specific, well-grounded, linked to strategies for improvement and delivered as an attempt

to share experience It also needs to be softened by means of a number of strategies These include ‘measuring words’ (to avoid being too negative), ‘soft-pedaling’ (i.e using internal and external modifications to lessen the harshness of the criticism), ‘using affirmative language’ such as comforting messages, ‘distancing and neutralizing’ (to depersonalize the criticism) and ‘using negotiating language’ (to avoid imposing on the addressee) (Wajnryb, 1993; cited by Minh, 2005:15) That point of view seems to be supported by Wajnryb (1995) who preferred a direct and ‘economical’ criticism rather than indirect, wordy, and ‘time-wasting’ one

Along these perceptions, Toplak and Katz (2000) focused an the difference between the speaker and the addressee when giving their judgments of the criticism given,

“The addressee tented to view sarcasm as more severe than the speaker intended” However, they also discovered that sarcasm was not perceived by the recipient as having

as negative an impact on the relationship between the interlocutors as direct criticisms

Tracy and Eissenberg (1990) in their investigation into the preferences for message clarity and politeness in giving criticism found that among people from different races and gender the superiors tender to given more weight to message clarity that did subordinates and that this preference also varied according to gender and race

Overall, the speech act of criticizing has attracted many researchers thanks to its great contribution to thoroughly deep understanding of the field Yet, the definition of this speech act is still not mentioned, which makes it difficult to compare and contrast the findings of the various studies

One of the most widely-used definition in the study of the field is Tracy et al’s (1987), in which they consider both criticizing and complaining as the act of ‘ finding fault’ and define these two speech acts as ‘negative evaluation of a person or an act for which he/she is deemed responsible’ However, Tracy et al’s (1987: 56) suggest two main points to distinguish between criticizing and complaining, which are “content and form and the salient role identity” of the giver and the receiver, criticisms are usually associated with higher social status and complaints with lower social status, although there may also be exceptions

Another definition of criticism is found in House and Kasper (1981), who consider criticisms, accusations, and reproaches as different kinds of complaints Their reasons for this are that all of these speech acts share the same two features, namely “post-event” and

“anti-speaker” However, one might argue against this definition at least on the following grounds Firstly, a criticism does not necessarily have to be always targeted at an event which happens earlier in the sense used by House and Kasper It can also be made about something static, permanent, and independent of chronological time such as a person’s

personality or appearance Secondly, the feature “anti-speaker” seems more applicable to complaints than to criticisms as pointed out by Tracy et al (1987) Both the illocutionary force and the illocutionary point that a critic and a complainer intend are inherently different In criticizing, S may intend H to try to improve to his or her own benefits, or S just may wish to express his or her opinion known In complaining, S implies that something bad has happened to himself or herself, or that H has done something bad to him or her and therefore expects a repair from the latter Thus, criticisms are usually, though not necessarily, associated with constructive attitudes or at least with non-self involvement, which is not the case with complaints

In light of this discussion, it is apparent that compared to other speech acts, our understanding of the speech act of criticizing is rather limited due to the fact that this speech act is under-researched in literature It is therefore necessary that more studies be conducted to shed lights on the pragmatic properties of criticizing, thus supplementing the existing body of speech act research, which is presently confined to a rather small set of speech acts

1.3 DIRECTNESS AND INDIRECTNESS

1.3.1 Directness and Indirectness in Language

Directness and Indirectness is one of the major dimensions in cross-cultural pragmatics It has been the subject of studies by many pragmatists, discourse analysts, sociologists and ethnographers including Searle, 1975; Brown and Levinson, 1984; Leech, 1983; Saville-Troike, 1986; etc…

Saville- Troike (1986) noticed that directness and indirectness have relation with language and that all kinds of speech acts can be classified as either direct She differentiated these two kinds based on the relationship between the surface from and the interactional function In a direct act, they match while in an indirect act, they do not To

illustrate this, she cited examples of asking others to be quiet While ‘Be quiet!’ is a direct act used as command, statements like ‘It’s getting noisy here’ or ‘I can’t hear myself think’

are indirect speech acts used for the same purpose

In his book ‘Pragmatics’ (1996), Yule, a discourse analyst offered another way to distinguish between direct and indirect speech acts He claimed that ‘whenever there is a

direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech act

Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function we have an indirect speech act’

However, among the various ways off differentiating direct and indirect speech acts, Searle’s way seems much clearer and simpler As for him, in direct speech acts, the speaker says what he means while in indirect speech act, the speaker means more than he says Therefore, direct speech acts are clear enough to hearers to understand Meanwhile,

to grasp the massager of an indirect speech act, one needs some inferential work

At discourse level, indirectness can be understood as: in a sequence of sentences, the first sentence paves the way for the information, which is embedded in the sentence that comes later

1.3.2 Directness and Indirectness in Culture

The most influential factors found in people’s ways of thinking and expressions are the cultural factors In turn, each culture influences in communication may verify The variations are distinguished in linguistic description via the terms “directness” and

“indirectness” While our culture pays great attention to indirectness in communication, another culture prefers a more direct style in communication by considering roundabout expression as unnecessary and insincere

In his study on 700 essays of foreign students in the United States, Kaplan found out four ‘cultural thought patterns’ in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon linearity They are the culturally-based discourse structures, each of which represents a certain language or a group of languages The following diagrams respectively illustrate them:

1 figure(a): Anglo-Saxon linearity ( with English)

2 figure(b): Parallel constructions, with the first idea completed in the second part (with Semitic)

3 figure(c): Circularity, with the topic looked at from different tangents (with Oriental)

4 figure(d): Freedom to digress and introduce “extraneous” material (with Romance)

5 figure(e): similar to (d) but with different lengths, parenthetical amplifications, and

an abrupt stop of subordinate elements ( with Russian)

According to Kaplan’s diagrams, English-speaking people are inclined to use straightforward and direct way of expression Meanwhile, Oriental people in general and the Vietnamese in particular seem to prefer and roundabout expressions This can be illustrated in the following examples

Informing a mother of her son’s death a Vietnamese may say:

“Thưa bác chúng cháu đã cố gắng rất nhiều nhưng cậu ấy đã bỏ gia đình ta mà đi Âu đó cũng là cái số bác ạ Cháu mong bác đừng vì thế mà quá đau buồn”

In the same action, an American can say:

“Mrs Smith, I regret to inform you that your son died from injuries Please accept my sympathy for your loss and be assured that the accident happened very quickly and your son couldn’t have suffered” Nguyen Quang (2003:257)

In the study of directness and indirectness, Nguyen Quang (2003) gives an example

of what he terms the “By the way phenomenon”, which is widely and practically used by

the Vietnamese

Anh ạ, đợt này em xây nhà bận quá Đúng là “làm ruộng thì ra, làm nhà thì tốn” thật Anh biết không, lúc đầu dự trù khoảng 230 triệu là thoải mái thế mà mới xây xong phần thô đã mất đến hơn 160 triệu rồi Em còn có 70 triệu mà theo dự toán phải mất khoảng 90 triệu nữa mới hoàn thiện được Em cũng ngại quá nhưng cũng chẳng biết nhờ vả ai Em qua hỏi anh xem anh có thể cho em vay khoảng 20 triệu đươc không ạ? Em xin gửi lại anh tiền vào đầu quí tới anh ạ”

You know, I have been so busy with a new house It is said that “Farming is productive, Building a new house is unproductive” At first, the estimation of about 230 million VND was enough for the whole construction but only the frame completed counts for 160 million

VND It is estimated that it needs about 90 million VND for the finishing while I have only

70 million VND left I’m so worried but I have no one else to depend on Thus, I have to call at you wondering whether you could lend me 20 million VND If you could, I would pay your money back at the beginning of the next quarter”

In the case of borrowing a car, the Anglicist tent to be more direct, for example:

Andy: Hello

Jack: Hi, Andy This is Jack

Andy: Oh, hi Jack

Jack: I was wondering if you could do me a favor

Andy: That depends

Jack: Well, I have to go a wedding this weekend Would it be OK if I borrow your brand – new car?

Andy: Oh, sure No problem

Jack: Thanks a lots, I’ll come by and pick it up tonight

Andy: That’s fine

In brief, in the Vietnamese culture, the purpose of the conversation is often revealed in the end after a lot of small talk and explanation while in the Anglicist culture, it is more often put at the beginning and the conservation may be added with some small talk if time is allowed

However, the researcher agrees with Nguyen’s (2004) comment that it would be a mechanical overgeneralization if we based on Kaplan’s diagrams and supposed that English-speaking people only communicate in direct ways and Oriental people only use indirect expressions This is because the written discourse structures Kaplan found out may

be not applied to oral expression Additionally, even people in one culture do not communicate in the same way as Thomas (1995: 124) once commented:

Directness is universal in the sense that it occurs to some degree in all

(natural) languages, but that does not mean that we always employ

directness or that we all employ indirectness in the same way Individuals

and cultures vary widely in how, when and why they use an indirect speech

act in preference to a direct one

1.4 ORAL PRESENTATION

1.4.1 Presentation Definition

Ohio Wesleyan University, in their “Guidelines for Oral Presentations” define oral presentations as “brief discussions of a focused topic delivered to a group of listeners in order to impart knowledge or to stimulate discussion They are similar to short papers with

an introduction, main body and conclusion The ability to give brief presentions is a learned skill and the one that is called on frequently in the workplace”

To put it differently, a presentation is a kind of communication between the speaker and the audience, in which the speaker convey the massage to the audience through the use

of verbal and nonverbal communication as well as visual aids

Presentation comes in many forms, one of which is training form or class presentations (Templeton and FitzGerald, 1999: 4) Each class presentation normally consists of three sections, namely, presentation, question-and-answer and feedback In the presentation section, students are given an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding

of a topic and to explain it to an audience The question-and-answer section, as its name, is the one in which the presenters answer questions from the audience Finally, students can learn a lot from the cogent feedbacks from teachers and peers in the feedback period However, in some cases, the presentation and the question-and-answer periods can be combined to the preference of the presenters

1.4.2 Class Presentation Assessment Criteria

As mentioned above, at the end of a class presentation, there is a feedback section

in which teachers and students give their comments to the presentation When a presentation is assessed, an extensive list of criteria will be considered In their studies, Mandel (1987), Templeton and FitzGerald(1999), Koch and Felber (1985) offered a variety of criteria as such However, within the scope of this present research, only the most relevant criteria will be reviewed, i.e criteria in terms of Content, Organization, Delivery and Question-handling skills

 Content

All the authors agreed that a good presentation should have clearly stated purpose and clear arguments Also, it should be focused, i.e at no time should the presenter wander off the topic they are presenting

 Organization

According to Koch and Felber (1985) a well- organized presentation not only helps the audiences understand and appreciate its message more easily but also allows the speaker to eliminate wordiness, or unnecessary materials He suggested that a presentation should be divided into three parts, i.e the introduction, the body and the conclusion The introduction should direct audience’s attention to the subject and make them want to listen The body should communicate ideas in a clear, meaningful way, and the conclusion should tie these ideas together in a neat package

Templeton and FitzGerald (1999) also proposed five most widely used patterns to organize a presentation including chronological (time sequence), spatial (geographically), topical, causal, and problem-solution Which pattern to choose is dependent on the topic and setting of the presentation itself

 Delivery

Delivery is the phase in which the speakers present their ideas to the audience What the presenters do in this phase will have deciding effects on the success of their presentation To make a good delivery, presenters should pay attention to the following factors

 Pace and Voice

The speaker’s voice, as for Templeton and FitzGerald (1999), should sound natural, yet controlled and professional In addition, volume is also very important Too much volume can be intimidating and offensive However, too little volume is also a problem If

one makes the audience ‘work’ to hear what he or she has to say, they will not listen long

Instead, they may judge the presenter as lacking confidence or competence Templeton and FiztGerald also suggested that the presenter should make use of silence because a long pause followed by quietly spoken words always gets the audience’s attention

 Body language /Non-verbal communication

As Templeton and FitzGerald (1999) pointed out, ‘what you don’t say speaks

louder than works.’ (p.139) Indeed, non-verbal communication plays a crucial role in the

success of the presentation How one looks can help or hurt his or her credibility as a speaker Thus, in a presentation, one should pay attention to such elements as distances, posture, facial expressions, eye contact, gestures, and body movement The two authors also suggested that nonverbal communication had to be matched which the verbal content

 Visual aids

Visual aids are anything used to support the speaker’s message such as read objects, slide projections, videos, flip charts, etc As Templeton and FiztGerald (1999) put

in, ‘one picture…a thousand words’, good visual aids add credibility to the presentation

and keep the attention of the audience Thus, it is suggested that visual aids should be kept simple and made meaningful to support the content

 Handling questions

In Templeton and FiztGerald’s (1999) opinion, it is important to be honest, in control, and confident Mandel (1987) also agreed with this idea He even suggested some

tips to deal with question such as saying ‘I don’t know the answer but I will find out and

get back to you’’ in case the presenter does not know the answer to a question

Additionally, he advised the presenters not to preface, i.e , avoiding starting an answer

with such statements as ‘that’s a very good question, I am glad you asked it’ as it may be

the sign that they are unsure of the answer

To sum up, to assess a presentation, one may base on a variety of criteria, among which the most popular are those about content, organization, and delivery and question-handling skills These criteria were also the basis for the researcher to design questionnaires to elicit criticisms of teaches in the present study

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

2.1 COMMENTS ON PARTICIPANTS AND QUESTIONNAIRES

2.1.1 Participants

The present study is involved two groups of participants, i.e American teachers and Vietnamese teachers To check whether the participants were suitable to the study or not, related questions were added to the personal information part in the questionnaire Moreover, for those participants who were staying in Vietnam at the time of data collection, the researcher normally had a small talk with them before asking them to fill in the questionnaire By doing so, the researcher also know more about the participants

30 American teachers (11 males and 19 females) and 38 Vietnamese teachers (17 males and 21 females) were chosen The American participants came from a variety of university in American, i.e University of Michigan, Columbia Southern University and Troy University Meanwhile, Vietnamese participants were chosen from three universities, i.e National Economics University, Foreign Trading University and Commercial University

2.1.2 Questionnaires

Two questionnaires were designed One was aimed at Vietnamese teachers and the other was for Vietnamese counterparts Each questionnaire was written in participants’ mother tongue and in simple wording to ensure that participants would have no difficulties

in understanding them

Each questionnaire consisted of three parts, namely, the introduction, the personal information, the task The introduction part included an explanation of the purpose of the questionnaire and the researchers’ promise to preserve the participant’s anonymity The personal information part, as its name, was aimed at gathering bio-data of the participants including age, gender, university and their teaching presentations experience These bio-data would help the researcher to choose the most suitable participants for the study, thus, enforcing the validity of collected data The task included seven criticism eliciting

situations These situations were constructed based on the criteria for a good presentation, which are discussed in the literature review chapter They were focused on four aspects of

a presentation namely, content, organization, delivery, and question-handling skills to which audience normally pays attention

The seven criticism eliciting situations read: “Supposing that you have attended your

student’s presentation What would you say in the following hypothetical situations? You are expected to give your verbal comments to the presenter in class time Your comments should be in direct speech (E.g “I think you should keep eye-contact with the audience…”) rather than in reported speech (E.g I would tell him/her to keep eye-contact with the audience.)”

(1) What would you say to your student if you thought he or she sometimes

strayed far from the topic he/she had identified from the beginning? (E.g He/she spent time mentioning something irrelevant to what he/she was talking about)

(2) What would you say to your student if you thought some of his or her

arguments were not logical and did not support his /her assertions?

(3) What would you say to your student if you thought his or her presentation

was not very well organized so it was rather difficult to follow his or her ideas?

(4) What would you say to your student if you thought his or her gestures were

not natural enough and sometimes distracted the audience?

(5) What would you say to your student if you thought his or her voice was not

strong and clear enough so sometimes you could not hear him or her? (6) What would you say to your student if you thought the visual aids he/she

used detracted from the presentation? (E.g small font size, too colorful slides, etc.)

(7) What would you say to your student if you thought he/she seemed to lack

confidence when giving answers to the audience’s questions?

Additionally, the researcher also followed the suggestion of Oppenheim (1996, cited

in Nguyen, 2005) when providing sufficient space under each hypothetical situation for the respondents to write their answers

2.2 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE

To collect the necessary data, the researchers have followed the procedure below

Step 1: Pilot the questionnaires

The questionnaires were piloted to one American and two Vietnamese participants The American teacher came from Columbia Southern University and was teaching in Hanoi As for the two Vietnamese teachers, one of them came from National Economics University and one from Foreign Trading University

Step 2: Revise the questionnaires

After the pilot survey, an amendment was made to the instruction of the task in the questionnaire The words of the original questionnaires were so vague that all the three participants misunderstood what were required of them Their answers were about they would do in those situations rather than what they would say to the presenter Realizing this shortcoming, alterations were made to enhance the clarity of the instructions of both questionnaires to avoid misunderstandings

Step 3: Deliver the main questionnaires

All the questionnaires were delivered to the targeted groups of participants either in person or via mail

2.3 DATA CODING

The criticisms given by participants in the seven situations were coded according to their realization strategies, i.e direct or indirect and semantic formulas

According to Blum-Kulka (1987), the directness level of a criticism was

determined by the degree of illocutionary transparency “The more indirect the mode of

realization, the higher will be the interpretive demands.” (Blum-Kulka, 1987, as cited in

Nguyen, 2005, p.112) Thus, the researcher also interpreted the illocutionary point of a

criticism in order to identify it as a direct or indirect one

Criticism semantic formulas are semantic structures that have acquired an illocutionary force representing criticism (Adapted from Clark, 1979)

Table 1: Categorization of criticism strategies

1 Direct criticisms Explicitly point out the problem with H’s choice/

actions/ work/ products, etc

a Negative evaluation Usually expressed via evaluative adjectives with

negative meaning or evaluative adjective with positive meaning plus negation

b Disapproval Describing S’s attitude towards H’s choice, etc

c Expression of disagreement Usually realized by means of negation word “No” or

perfomatives “I don’t agree” or “I disagree” (with or

without modal) or via arguments against H

d Identification of problem Stating errors or problems found with H’s choice, etc

e Statement of difficulties Usually expressed by means of such structure as “I find

it difficult to understand …”, “It’s difficult to understand…”

f Consequences Warning about negative consequences or negative

effects of H’s choice, etc for H himself or herself or for the public

2 Indirect criticism Implying the problems with H’s choice/ actions/

work/ product, etc

a Correction Including all utterances which have the purpose of

fixing errors by asserting specific alternatives to H’s choice, etc

b Indicating standard Usually stated as a collective obligation rather than an

obligation for H personally or a rule which S thinks is commonly agreed upon and applied to all

c Preaching Usually stated as guidelines to H, with an implicature

that H is incapable of making correct choices otherwise

d Demand for change Usually expressed via such structures as “you have to”,

“you must”, “it is obligatory that” or “you are

required”, or “you need”, “it is necessary”

e Request for change Usually expressed via such structures as “will you…?”,

“can you…?”, “would you…?” or imperatives (with or

without politeness markers), or want-statement

f Advice about change Usually expressed via the performatives “I advise

you…” or structures with “should” (with or without

modality)

g Suggestion for change Usually expressed via the performative “I suggest

that…” or such structures as “you can”, “you could”, “it would be better if” or “why don’t you” etc

h Expression of uncertainty Utterances expressing S’s uncertainty to raise H’s

awareness of the inappropriateness of H’s choice, etc

i Asking/ presupposing Rhetorical questions to raise H’s awareness of the

inappropriateness of H’s choice, etc

j Other hints Including other kinds of hints that did not belong to (h)

and (i) May include sarcasm

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

a Negative evaluation

 In English

When deliver a direct criticism, teachers can give out a negative evaluation on student’s presentation by using some negative-evaluative adjectives For instances:

(1) Your presentation is rather messy (S3)

(2) Your gesture is poor (S4)

(3) Your answer was wrong (S7)

In all the above examples, we face with three adjectives with different meanings (messy, poor, wrong, etc.), but they are all used to serve the same purpose- to give negative evaluations on students’ presentation skills

In addition, the evaluation adjectives with positive meaning in English combined with a negation will also express negative evaluations on H’s behavior, acts, choices,

words, work, products and etc In these examples below the positive adjectives focused,

convincing, strong, effective, good, professional, etc go with a negation “no” or “not”,

which give negative evaluations on students’ presentations

(4) Your presentation was not focused (S1)

(5) Your assertions were not convincing enough (S2) (6) Your voice was not strong enough (S5)

(7) Your visual aids were not effective (S6)

(8) It is no good using that picture for illustration (S6)

(9) It is not professional to start the answer like … (S7)

 In Vietnamese

Interestingly, direct criticisms in the form of negative evaluations in Vietnamese were also found From the data collected, Vietnamese teachers use the following patterns

to criticize students’ presentation

 Person/thing criticized + negative-evaluative adjective

(10) Bài nói của em không thành công lắm vì nó hơi lạc đề.(S1)

(Your presentation was not so successful as it as off topic) (11) Bài thuyết trình này lập luận lủng củng quá (S2)

(Arguments in your presentation were illogical) (12) Bài thuyết trình của em rắc rối quá (S3)

(Your presentation was so complicated.)

 person/thing criticized +là + negative-evaluative adjective

(13) Em nói như vậy là hơi bé (S5)

(Your voice was low) (14) Chọn hình ảnh minh họa như thế là hơi lòe loẹt.(S6)

(Your visual aids were colorful) (15) Trả lời như vậy là lạc đề (S7)

(Your answers were out of topic)

 person/thing criticized + không/chưa + positive-evaluative adjective

(16) Câu trả lời của em chưa thỏa đáng

(Your answers were not satisfactory.) (17) Chất giọng của em chưa cuốn hút người nghe

(Your voice was not attractive enough)

b Disapproval

 In English

Another way to deliver a criticism directly is to describe S’s attitude towards H’s behavior, acts, choices, words, work, products and etc This type of criticizing is categorized as disapproval strategies

The S who disapproves of an action thinks that it is bad things to do, and imagines that he could prevent this action from happening by expressing his negative opinion of it,

he mentally expresses his opinion

To express disapprovals, English people usually use phrases I don’t think…’s very

good, I’m (certainly) not in favor of…, I’m (really) not pleased/ upset, etc about…, It’s wrong to…, I can’t approve of , I (really) don’t approve of…, I’m not very happy about…, I’m dead against…, In my opinion…, I would like to say how much I disapprove of…However, from the collected data, English teachers rarely used such these phrases

when criticizing student’ presentation There is only one example:

(18) I don’t think your visual aids were good (S5)

(19) Cô không nghĩ là các ý trong bài thuyết trình của em logic.(S2)

(I don’t think the arguments were logic)

 1 st person + không hài lòng/ không tán đồng/ không vui/ khó chịu/ buồn bực/ phản đối… + person/action criticized

(20) Cô chưa hài lòng lắm với câu trả lời của em.(S7)

(I’m not very happy about your answer.)

c Identification of problem

 In English

Identification of problem which states errors or problem with H’s behavior, acts, choices, words, work, products, and etc can also be considered as a direct strategy of criticism In this strategy, the teacher criticizes student through explicating all student’s errors and problem; for instance:

(21) You sometimes went off the track (S1)

(22) There seems to be some mistakes Why did you say [illogical arguments]? It doesn’t follow from what you said previously (S2)

(23) The organization of your presentation was not clear (S3)

(24) You looked serious.(S4)

(25) You sometimes speak a bit too softly for the audience to hear you well (S5) (26) Although you did a good job on the visual aids, they detracted from the presentation (S6)