Students’ pragmatic awareness and implications for English classroom teaching at Vietnam University of Commerce = Nhận thức ngữ dụng học của sinh viên và các gợ

Chapter III: Data Analysis and Findings: This chapter interprets the answer to the posed research questions: How much are VUC 1st year non-English major students aware of English pragma

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-o0o -

PHẠM THÙY GIANG

STUDENTS’ PRAGMATIC AWARENESS AND IMPLICATIONS

FOR ENGLISH CLASSROOM TEACHING

AT VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE

(Nhận thức ngữ dụng học của sinh viên và các gợi ý cho việc giảng dạy

Tiếng Anh tại Trường Đại học Thương mại)

Summary of M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

HANOI – 2012

STUDENTS’ PRAGMATIC AWARENESS AND IMPLICATIONS

FOR ENGLISH CLASSROOM TEACHING

AT VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE

(Nhận thức ngữ dụng học của sinh viên và các gợi ý cho việc giảng dạy

Tiếng Anh tại Trường Đại học Thương mại)

Summary of M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Supervisor: Nguyen Bach Thao, M.A

HANOI – 2012

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration of originality i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

Lists of abbreviations vii

List of tables viii

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Significance of the study 2

6 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Pragmatics 4

1.1.1 Definitions 4

1.1.2 Aspects of Pragmatics 4

1.1.2.1 Speech acts 5

1.1.2.1.1 Definitions 5

1.1.2.1.2 Categories of speech acts 5

1.1.2.2 Pragmalinguistics 6

1.1.2.2.1 Definitions and aspects of pragmalinguistics 6

1.1.2.2.2 Directness v.s indirectness 7

1.1.2.3 Sociopragmatics 7

1.1.2.3.1 Definitions 7

1.1.2.3.2 Aspects of sociopragmatics 8

1.1.2.3.2.1 Politeness 8

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1.1.2.3.2.2 Cultural norms 9

1.2 Pragmatic awareness 9

1.2.1 Definitions 9

1.2.2 Difference between awareness of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics 10

1.2.3 Previous studies 11

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 14

2.1 Situation analysis 14

2.2 Methods of the study 14

2.3 Research design 15

2.3.1 Sample and sampling 15

2.3.2 Instruments 15

2.3.3 Data collection 17

2.3.4 Data analysis 17

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 18

3.1 Awareness of greeting 19

3.2 Awareness of addressing 20

3.3 Awareness of introducing 22

3.4 Awareness of requesting and responding 23

3.5 Awareness of inviting and responding 27

3.6 Awareness of parting 28

3.7 Awareness of thanking and responding 30

3.8 Awareness of conversation topics 32

3.9 Summary of the findings 34

CHAPTER 4: IMPLICATIONS 35

4.1 Raising students’ pragmalinguistic awareness 35

4.2 Raising students’ awareness of politeness 36

4.3 Raising students’ awareness of cultural norms 36

4.3.1 Integrating culture into language teaching 36

4.3.1.1 Enforcing the teaching of British and American cultural background 36

4.3.1.2 Creating culture-rich learning environment 36

4.3.2 Designing a cultural syllabus 37

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4.3.3 Providing more authentic teaching materials 38

4.4 Improving the pragmatic teaching in the way of holding tests and exams 39 4.5 Developing teachers’ competence 39

PART C: CONCLUSION 41

1 Summary of the study 41

2 Limitations of the study 41

3 Suggestions for further studies 42

REFERENCES 43 APPENDICES

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

VUC Vietnam University of Commerce ESL English as a second language EFL English as a foreign language

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Average percentage of appropriate responses by speech acts Table 3.2: Students‘ awareness of greeting

Table 3.3: Students‘ awareness of addressing

Table 3.4: Students‘ awareness of introducing

Table 3.5: Students‘ awareness of requests and responses

Table 3.6: Students‘ awareness of inviting

Table 3.7: Students‘ awareness of parting

Table 3.8: Students‘ awareness of thanks and responses

Table 3.9: Students‘ awareness of conversation topics

of the target language in authentic communication situations, they cannot interpret the utterances correctly, or express themselves appropriately One of the reasons is that they lack necessary pragmatic knowledge; that is, they are not aware of the social, cultural, and discourse conventions that have to be followed in various situations like many other proficient speakers of English (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999) This is understandable because according to Bachman (1990), in order to be successful in communication, it is essential for foreign language learners like Vietnamese students to know not just grammar and text organization but also pragmatic aspects of the target language Once they are not aware of English pragmatic aspects, they may be incapable of using the target language effectively

in intercultural communication In other words, low pragmatic awareness results in many communication breakdowns

As a teacher of English at Vietnam University of Commerce, from her own observations and experience, the researcher has noticed that VUC students often get difficulties in communicating in English when involving in different communication situations in classrooms as well as in real-life encounters Many of them do not employ appropriate strategies and do not use relevant linguistic forms to perform a speech act They engage in communication activities without paying attention to factors that influence the communication such as the relationship with the other interlocutor The situation is worse when they interact with native speakers As they are not exposed much

to real-life situations, they often feel stuck They may not understand what native speakers mean or are unable to make appropriate utterances in different situations Especially, they often violate politeness or cultural norms, thus leading to their difficulty

or even failure in intercultural communication This maybe due to the fact that they are not really aware of pragmatic aspects or do not put great emphasis on them

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Such a situation has inspired the author to carry out a research paper into

“Students’ pragmatic awareness and implications for English classroom teaching at Vietnam University of Commerce.” with a focus on VUC 1st year non-English major students‘ pragmatic awareness Some pedagogical implications are also given to help raise the students‘ pragmatic awareness and increase English teaching effectiveness

2 Aims of the study

The purpose of this research is to explore 1st year non-English major students‘ pragmatic awareness at the university where the researcher is serving Basing on the research results, the researcher then goes further to figure out teaching techniques to raise the students‘ pragmatic awareness It is specifically important because these freshmen should be properly primed for directing their own learning process, setting as a good foothold for the next coming school years and in the long run for their life-long study When they are aware of pragmatic aspects and put much emphasis on these right from their initial time studying at university, they will have a right orientation in studying English, thus increasing the effectiveness of their English study It is also hoped that the study will be a contribution to improve the teaching quality at this university

3 Research questions

The study is aimed at answering two research questions:

1 How much are VUC 1st year non-English major students aware of English pragmatic aspects?

2 What should be done to improve the students‘ pragmatic awareness?

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on investigating pragmatic awareness of VUC 1st year English major students who are not taught pragmatics explicitly That of English major students or 2nd, 3rd or 4th year students, therefore, is left for future research Also, due to the time constraints, this study involves a small number of students Moreover, the participants targeted in the survey questionnaire for native speakers are all American; therefore, only American social and cultural norms are used to form a data basis for analysing and evaluating the appropriateness of the students‘ responses

non-5 Significance of the study

The study is hoped to be valuable to not only VUC teachers and students but Vietnamese education policy makers as well First, the study should be able to help

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teachers at VUC improve their theoretical understanding of pragmatics and its importance

in language learning and teaching From this, they can find more suitable and effective teaching strategies and put more emphasis on teaching pragmatic aspects to help their students highly aware of pragmatics, thus they can use English more fruitfully in their professional and academic life Second, it is hoped that the research will enhance VUC students‘ pragmatic awareness so as to help them become more engaged in classroom activities Third, by presenting a wealth of relevant literature, the study is expected to propose some ideas to help educators and policy makers take steps along the path toward building pragmatically authentic materials and introducing pragmatic-oriented examinations into the curriculum Another significance of the study is to contribute obviously to the knowledge of pragmatic awareness which is still an alien linguistic area

in Vietnam On the other hand, it suggests new aspects for further studies

6 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts as follows:

Part A: Introduction: This part presents the rationale, aims, methods, scope, significance and design of the study

Part B: Development: There are four chapters to this part Chapter I: Literature Review: This chapter reviews the literature to provide a basic theoretical background on

pragmatic awareness and a justification for conducting the study on the grounds of

finding a gap left by previous studies on pragmatic awareness Chapter II: Methodology:

This chapter deals with the overall picture of how the research was carried out from the

first step of determining the study structure to the last one of collecting and analyzing data Chapter III: Data Analysis and Findings: This chapter interprets the answer to the

posed research questions: How much are VUC 1st year non-English major students aware

of English pragmatic aspects? What should be done to improve the students‘ pragmatic

awareness? The findings end with conclusions and comments Chapter IV: Implications:

This chapter recommends possible improvements for both teachers and students with an

aim to raise the students‘ pragmatic awareness

Part C: Conclusion: This part summarises the main contents and findings of the study, limitations of the present study and some suggestions for further studies

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter serves as the theoretical background for the study The definitions and aspects of pragmatics and pragmatic awareness were given to clarify the subject matters investigated and the significance of the matters

2006, p 1) or ―the study of the use of context to make inferences about meaning‖ (Fasold

1990, p 119)

Out of numerous definitions of pragmatics, one of interest in second language pedagogy has been proposed by Crystal (in Kasper, 2001, p 2) as ―the study of language from the point of view of users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction and the effects their use of language has

on other participants in the act of communication.‖ In other words, pragmatics is defined

as the study of communicative action in its sociocultural context Kasper (2001, p 2) indicates that communicative actions includes not only using speech acts (such as apologizing, complaining, complimenting, and requesting) but also engaging in different types of discourse and participating in speech events of varying length and complexity

1.1.2 Aspects of Pragmatics

Pragmatics offers various areas of study Yule (2006, p.112-119) discusses such different areas as invisible meaning, context, deixis, reference, inference, anaphora, presupposition, speech acts, direct and indirect speech acts, negative and positive face and politeness Scholars like Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) have carried out their studies on speech acts which introduce three acts, a locutionary act, an illocutionary act and a

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perlocutionary act Following Austin and Searle, Billmeyer (1990), Cohen and Olshtain (1993), Bouton (1994), and Tateyama (2001) have investigated some specific pragmatic aspects focusing on such speech acts as complimenting, apologising, and requesting and comprehension of implicature

Different from the scholars who focus their studies on speech acts, Grice (1975) has explored why interlocutors can successfully converse with one another in a conversation Brown and Levinson (1978) and Leech (1983) were concerned with politeness

In this study, the researcher follows the division of pragmatics by Leech and Thomas (in Kasper, 2001), who classified pragmatics into two components, namely pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics These two aspects of pragmatics will be discussed along with the employment of speech acts

1.1.2.1 Speech acts

1.1.2.1.1 Definitions

The speech act theory is attributed to Austin (1962), who claimed ―many

utterances, termed performatives, do not only communicate information, but also are equivalent to actions‖ (p 22) In other words, by these utterances, people do things or have others do things for them; they apologize, promise, request, refuse and complain Utterances that may be used to realize the above functions are known as speech acts 1.1.2.1.2 Categories of speech acts

Austin (1962) categorised speech acts into different aspects: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary

According to Levinson (1983, p 236):

(i) locutionary act is the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference Whenever a speaker produces an utterance, they perform a locutionary act This is simply the act of producing a linguistically well-formed, and thus meaningful, expression

(ii) illocutionary act is the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc in uttering a sentence, by virtue of the conventional force associated with it (or with its explicit performative paraphrase) In other words, the illocutionary act is the function of the utterance that the speaker has in mind, i.e., the communicative purpose that is intended or achieved by the utterance An example is the statement ―It‘s hot in here‖ This sentence can have the illocutionary force of a statement, an offer, an explanation, or a request It

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might be uttered by someone who is experiencing heat in a crowded room to just comment on the weather It can also be uttered by a person who intends to open the window so that everyone in the room can enjoy fresh air from outside

(iii) perlocutionary act is the bringing about the effects on the audience by means

of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance (that

is, the hearer may feel amused, annoyed, as a consequence of the speaker‘s utterance) Among the three acts, the illocutionary act is regarded as the most important, as it

is actually what the speaker wants to achieve through the action of uttering the sentence Yule (1996) claims that, of these types of speech acts, the most distinctive one is illocutionary force: ―Indeed, the term speech act is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance‖ (p 49)

Searle provided a classification of speech acts according to their functions; he divided them into five categories including ―representatives‖, ―directives‖,

―commissives‖, ―expressives‖ and ―declaratives‖ (1979, p 12):

(i) representatives, which commit the speaker to the truth of expressed proposition (paradigm cases: asserting, concluding, etc.)

(ii) directives, which are attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something (paradigm cases: requesting, questioning, etc.)

(iii) commissives, which commit the speaker to some future course of action (paradigm cases: promising, threatening, offering)

(iv) expressives, which express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating)

(v) declaratives, which affect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions (paradigm cases: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment)

1.1.2.2 Pragmalinguistics

1.1.2.2.1 Definitions and aspects of pragmalinguistics

Pragmalinguistics refers to the resources for conveying communicative acts and relational or interpersonal meanings Such resources include pragmatic strategies such as directness and indirectness, routines, and other range of linguistic forms which can soften

or intensify communicative acts Pragmalinguistic term can be applied to the study of the more linguistic end of pragmatics where it is possible to consider the particular resources which a given language provides for conveying particular illocution (Leech, 1983, p 11)

pragmalinguistics incluses two aspects, namely, conventions of means (strategies for realizing speech intentions) and conventions of forms (the linguistic items used to

express speech intentions) (Kasper & Roever, 2005) The former refers to the semantic devices (or semantic formulas) by which a speech act is performed The latter involves the exact wordings used For example, a request can be realized by means of different semantic formulas, from a direct statement expressing obligation to an indirect statement expressing wishes A request can be realized by means of different wordings such as ―You must lend me your car.‖, ―I would like to borrow your car.‖,

―Could you lend me your car?‖, or ―My car has broken down.‖, and so on

1.1.2.2.2 Directness v.s indirectness

Searle (1969, 1975), based on Austin‘s work, put forward the important notion of indirect speech acts According to Searle, direct speech acts enjoy a transparent relationship between form and function Indirect speech acts, on the other hand, display no such relationship, and therefore, their illocutionary force does not derive from their surface structure To put it differently, indirect speech acts consist of two acts, a primary illocutionary act and a secondary one where the primary act operates through and in force of the secondary one For example, as a guest in another‘s home, one would be unlikely to say ―Give me a drink‖ but might instead say ―I don‘t suppose you have any cold water?‖

The phenomenon of ―indirect speech acts‖ is considered universal across all languages and it is those indirect speech acts that make up the majority in everyday conversations

Schmitt (2002, p 80) states that sociopragmatic perspective focuses on the socially based assessment, beliefs and interactional principles that underlie people‘s choice of strategies For example, a speaker who is a dinner guest wanting to reach the salt which is

at the other side of the table could say: ―Pass the salt, will you?‖ or ―Can you pass the salt?‖ depending on the relationship between that speaker and the hearer (close or distant, equal or unequal) or the social acceptability of reaching for food in such a context Such social judgements are the focus of sociopragmatics

1.1.2.3.2 Aspects of sociopragmatics

Based on Brown & Levinson‘s division (1987), in which sociopragmatics can be used to refer to knowledge of relative power, social distance, and imposition and knowledge of mutual rights and obligations, taboos, and conventional courses of action, the present researcher determines two aspects of sociopragmatics, namely, politeness and cultural norms It is hoped that this classification can help facilitate the process of analyzing qualitative data

1.1.2.3.2.1 Politeness

Leech (1983) defined politeness as ―a communication strategy which people use to maintain and develop relationships Politeness is mainly used in only two functions: competitive and convivial‖ (p 152) According to Yule (1996), politeness is ―polite social behavior, or etiquette, within a culture and the means employed to show awareness of another person‘s face‖ (p 60) These definitions are culture-oriented

A number of scholars proposed interpretations of the concept of politeness in terms of cultural, cross-cultural and linguistic properties Among them, Brown and Levinson (1987) proposed three basic notions of politeness such as ―face‖, ―face threatening act‖ and ―politeness strategy‖ They maintained that in society everyone has

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positive and negative faces The negative face is one‘s desire that nobody impedes his or her actions, whereas the positive face implies that people expect their needs to be desirable to others as well

Also according to Brown and Levinson (1987), there are three independent variables that have a systematic effect on the choice of politeness strategy in the social

context They include the social distance between two interlocutors, the relative power one interlocutor has over the other, and the absolute ranking of impositions in the culture

in which the two are in Social distance reflects the degree of familiarity and solidarity that both the hearer and speaker share Relative power indicates the degree of imposition that the speaker may inflict on the hearer due to the power differential between the two parties Finally, absolute ranking refers to the weightiness of impositions relative to a given culture‘s expectations and modes This includes ―the right of the speaker to perform the act, and the degree to which the hearer welcomes the imposition‖ (Brown & Levinson,

1978, p 74) With these variables in mind, the speaker must choose specific linguistic forms that reflect particular politeness strategies relative to the variables that are involved

in a specific context

1.1.2.3.2.2 Cultural norms

In Malinowski‘s opinion (1994), language forms depend on cultural background; language is the carrier of culture, as well as a part of culture Malinowski argues, ―one language must be deep—rooted in a given culture, conversely, the social culture is unavoidably reflected in language.‖

In a given setting of culture, when people use language to communicate with each other, they must follow certain conventional rules for social communication If learners have no knowledge about the cultural components a given language carries, they would not be able to adjust the language forms according to the context of situation, even less likely to master the language, let alone to apply the language in an appropriate way For example, repeated invitations may be tolerable in Vietnamese context, but in most Western contexts, repeated inviations are considered improper and even rude

1.2 Pragmatic awareness

1.2.1 Definitions

The definitions of pragmatic awareness vary from study to study Pragmatic awareness is defined as conscious notice of or attention to particular pragmatic functions

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and utterances in the language input based on the noticing hypothesis 1 (Schmidt 1990, 1993a, 1993b, 1994.) and research of awareness as well as consciousness of input in second and foreign language learning (Bardovi-Harlig & Griffin 2005; Garcia 2004) Pragmatic awareness (e.g Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998; Garcia, 2004) has been used

to refer to a hearer‘s ability to correctly infer an interlocutor‘s intended meaning Bardovi-Harlig and Griffin (2005), and Schauer (2006) defined pragmatic awareness as learners‘ recognition of pragmatic infelicities In Cook and Liddicoat‘s (2002) study, pragmatic awareness was operationalized as the learner‘s ability to interpret different request expressions More specifically, in his own research, Hinkel (1997) defined it as learners‘ ability in identifying the most appropriate advice options (direct, hedged, or indirect) from the multiple-choice questionnaire

Pragmatic awareness plays an important role in developing pragmatic competence

‗Pragmatic competence‘ can be specifically defined as ―knowledge of communicative action and how to carry it out, and the ability to use language appropriately according to context‖ (Kasper, 1997) Kasper (1996) listed three conditions for the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge: ―There must be pertinent input, the input has to be noticed, and learners need ample opportunities to develop a high level of control‖ (p 148) In other words, to develop pragmatic competence, the learner has to notice the pragmatic information in the input and understand its function in the surrounding context (i.e., pragmatic awareness)

Based on the aforementioned theories, it can be summarised that pragmatic awareness refers to conscious notice of or attention to particular pragmatic aspects and can be divided into two types: pragmalinguistic awareness and sociopragmatic awareness

1.2.2 Difference between awareness of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics

Despite a number of definitions of awareness of pragmalinguistics and sociopramatics, the difference between the two remains unclear Hudson et al (1992) warn that there is no absolute distinction between these two because sociopramatic concerns are realized pragmalinguistically For example, if a student calls out ―teacher‖ in

1 Smidth‘s noticing hypothesis claims that pragmatic awareness exists at two levels: noticing and understanding In pragmatics, awareness that on a particular occasion someone says to their interlocutor something like, ―I‘m terribly sorry to bother you, but if you have time could you look at this problem?‖ is a matter of noticing Relating the various forms used to their strategic deployment in the service of politeness and recognizing their co-occurrence with elements of context such as social distance, power, level of imposition, and so on, are all matters

of understanding (p 30)

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the classroom, he or she is not aware of pragmalinguistics for not saying, ―Excuse me, Ms.Smith‖- or he or she is not aware of sociopragmatics because this way of getting the teacher‘s attention is not how it is done in most English-language classrooms

of appropriate advice While the native speakers considered indirect advice to be more appropriate, the ESL learners perceived direct and hedged advice to be more appropriate

Among studies in the relationship between grammatical and pragmatic awareness, Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) investigated the recognition and rating of grammatical and pragmatic infelicities of the ESL and EFL learners The participants were asked to watch 20 video scenarios comprising various speech acts and either grammatical or pragmatic errors Then, they were asked to rate the levels of severity of the errors they perceived in the questionnaire The findings revealed that the ESL learners in the United States were more aware of pragmatic mistakes than grammatical mistakes In contrast, the EFL Hungarian learners recognized the grammatical mistakes more than pragmatic errors Concerning the severity degree, the ESL learners rated the pragmatic errors to be more severe than grammatical errors, while the EFL learners considered grammatical errors to be more important

Fukuya and Clark (2001) examined the effects of instruction on learners‘ ability to recognize the appropriate use of mitigators when making requests Fukuya and Clark (2001) applied input enhancement for an implicit teaching treatment They found the positive effects of implicit instruction on learners‘ strategies when making requests

Cook and Liddicoat (2002) studied ESL learners‘ pragmatic awareness of requests

in relation to their level of proficiency The high- and low-proficiency learners were asked to do the multiple-choice test by reading the request scenario and its corresponding request expression Each request expression was one of the three request types — direct, conventionally indirect, or unconventionally indirect request Then, they were required to select the interpretation to each request from the available choices Findings reported

Bardovi-Harlig and Griffin (2005) explored 43 ESL learners‘ pragmatic awareness

in identifying pragmatic infelicities from a video and repairing them The subjects were asked to work in pairs to identify what is missing from the speech act scenarios and then

to perform short role-plays to repair the infelicities they had identified The subjects‘ role plays were also video-taped to analyze the types of pragmatic infelicities that are noticed

by high intermediate learners and that are most easily remedied by them The results revealed the learners‘ recognition of pragmatic infelicities and their ability to supply the missing speech acts

Employing the Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei‘s (1998) video-and-questionnaire instrument plus interviews, Schauer (2006) studied the differences of ESL and EFL learners‘ recognition of pragmatic and grammatical errors She also investigated the ESL learners‘ development of their pragmatic awareness during an extended stay in the target environment Data from the 16 ESL and 17 EFL learners were compared with 20 native speakers of English The findings from this study are in line with the original work of Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) in that the ESL learners were more aware of pragmatic infelicities than the EFL group It was also found that the ESL learners significantly increased their pragmatic and grammatical awareness during their stay in Great Britain

Studies examining pragmatic awareness have focused on various speech acts such as advices (Hinkel, 1997; Matsumura, 2001, 2003), requests (Carrell & Konneker, 1981; Kitao, 1990; Suh, 1999; Tanaka & Kawade, 1982; Walters, 1979), requests and apologies (Olshtain & Blum-Kulka, 1985), suggestions (Koike, 1996), comparison of pragmatic and grammatical awareness for a set of speech acts including apologies, refusals, requests and suggestions (Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998; Niezgoda & Röver, 2001; Schauer, 2006) and compliments (Bulut and Özkan, 2005)

From the literature review on previous studies on pragmatic awareness, it can be clearly seen that most studies focused on a particular speech act such as requesting, advising, etc It is essential for this research to be conducted to cover a rather wider range

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of speech acts, some of which have not been illuminated yet such as greeting or parting and a pragmatic aspect, namely conversation topics In addition, learners‘ pragmatic awareness concerning pragmalinguisitcs and sociopragmatics has not been investigated in the aforementioned studies, which leaves a gap to be filled by this research Moreover, as the researcher learnt from the literature review, Vietnamese students‘ pragmatic awareness is out of concern of the previous studies and thus should be a focus in this study

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CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

The present chapter introduces the context of VUC, where the current research is done and describes the research design, methodological steps and procedures used to carry out this study It describes, in detail, the participants, data collection instruments, procedures, methods of data analysis, etc that were involved in the investigation

2.1 Situation analysis

The research was carried out at VUC At this university, students of English include English majors and non-English majors This study was only aimed at the latter Non-English major students are required to complete six semesters of English ranging from level 1 to 6 equivalent to English 1.1 and English 1.6 All these English courses cover business issues so that students can use them fruitfully in their future job Each course is allotted two credits with the structure 24.9.12 It means students will have 24 periods for class meetings, 9 periods for group presentations, and 12 periods for self-study (50 minutes a period) For the first semester, these students have to take part in a written exam after which they are placed into different classes based on their scores For the second one, they take English 1.1 course, for which the textbook English 1.1 adpated from ―Market leader‖ written by David Cotton, David Falvey and Simon Kent and published in 2004 by Longman has been adopted Its objective is to provide students with basic knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and necessary skills so that they can easily get involved in business communication One of the most important parts in this textbook is the ―Skills‖ section which helps develop students‘ essential business communication skills and make them familiar with some common situations in business such as introducing, suggesting, apologizing, etc ―Skills‖ activities in each unit focusing on a particular theme are used to consolidate students' knowledge of a language point, and to provide controlled and free practice of the target language Each ―Skills‖ section contains

a ―Useful language‖ box which provides students with the language they need to carry out the given business tasks Expressions and structures provided in the box are to help enhance students‘ pragmalinguistic knowledge Some speech acts are of the focus of the textbook such as: greeting, requesting, parting, thanking and responding, addressing, etc

2.2 Methods of the study

In consideration of the research‘s purposes, this study was done in the light of both qualitative and quantitative methods When choosing this approach, the author has good reasons for her choice It is undoubted that questionnaires are beneficial for obtaining

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quantitative information and thanks to their time and energy efficiency for collecting and analyzing Thus, the use of a quantitative questionnaire is believed to be appropriate to explore the participants‘ pragmatic awareness at the level of noticing the most appropriate response to each question However, the qualitative method of analysis seems to be more suitable to investigate the subjects‘ understanding of pragmatic aspects since it can offer insights into students‘ opinions, thoughts and reasonings – things that may be undetected with quantitative methods For these reasons, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is believed to be suited to this study

2.3 Research design

2.3.1 Sample and sampling

The participants in the study were 5 Americans and 50 first-year non-English major students at VUC 2 male and three female Americans in the survey were living in Vietnam They were from 24 to 35 years old The group of the student subjects for the questionnaire was constituted by 35 female and 15 male freshmen from five faculties at VUC The number of participants was equally distributed among these faculties The participants‘ ages ranged from 18 to 22 years old Most of them had been learning English for at least four years Especially, one student had 13-year experience in learning English Therefore, the students had their mastery of necessary grammatical knowledge to accomplish the survey Notably, none of the participants had lived in an English speaking country prior to taking part in the research To increase the reliability and validity of the research study, a random sampling procedure was applied

2.3.2 Instruments

A descriptive research design incorporating both qualitative and quantitative instruments was used to accomplish the objectives of the study The use of both types of instruments provides a more comprehensive picture of the participants‘ awareness than could be possible with one instrument alone (Creswell, 2008) Two questionnaires, which had the similar contents, were adopted in this research Among them, one was distributed

to five native speakers to elicit their answers, which were considered as a basis to evaluate the appropriateness of VUC students‘ answers The other was translated into Vietnamese and used to assess VUC students‘ pragmatic awareness The questionnaires were designed to consist of three parts Part one aimed at obtaining some background information of the subjects including their age, gender This part in the questionnaire for native speakers elicited the participants‘ nationality In the questionnaire for Vietnamese

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students, some other information such as how long they had been studying English and their experience in living in an English-speaking country was employed Part two included 16 multiple-choice questions, and to each one a brief situational description with four possible answers (except question 9 with 8 options) was provided For each item the subjects were required to choose the expression which best suited the given context There was a little difference between this part in the survey for native speakers and that in the survey for VUC students In the former, the native speakers were also asked to give their own utterance to each situation if they found all given utterances inappropriate This helped the researcher in designing the survey questionnaire for students in which for each situation there was only one most appropriate utterance Part three included 11 judgment questions, which required the subjects to judge whether an utterance or an act was proper

in a certain context All these items are regarded as closely related to the high-frequency activities in real cross-cultural communication, and bearing distinctive cultural differences Moreover, all items focused on speech acts mentioned in the textbook English 1.1, namely, greeting (items 2, 5, 6), addressing (items 4, 17), introducing (items

18, 27), requesting and responding (items 1, 3, 7, 8, 15, 16, 20, 25), inviting (items 10, 19), parting (items 11, 12, 23, 24), thanking and responding (items 13, 14, 21, 22) and one pragmatic aspect - conversation topics (items 9, 26) Those questions related to one speech act were not grouped together but were deliberately separated with an aim at checking the participants‘s ability to identify the speech acts The speech act of requesting enjoyed the largest number of questions in the survey questionnaire because this kind of speech act often requires learners‘ challenging endeavour to master as it involves many factors such as politeness and cultural norms After each question, the subjects were required to give a short explanation for their choice The objective of the qualitative part is to further explore the participants‘ ability to analyse given language expressions using their pragmatic awareness To increase the validity of the questionnaires, the researcher consulted her supervisor, colleagues and friends, who all had much experience in the areas of EFL teaching and language assessment Suggestions from these consultants led to two main points of revision: 1) the variables of politeness including power, social distance and rank of imposition between the interlocutors of some situations were clarified and emphasized, and 2) some redundancy and unnatural expressions were modified

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2.3.3 Data collection

After the revision, the English version of the questionnaire was administered to the sample of five native speakers of English who were American to find the native speakers‘ norms in selecting the appropriate expressions As there is no concrete standard for what

is considered appropriate language, the most valid and practical way to judge the appropriateness of an utterance in a particular context may rely on the native speakers‘ norms in language use Altogether 50 copies of the questionnaire in Vietnamese were distributed to 50 students at VUC at the end of English 1.1 course in June, 2012 Before the questionnaires were distributed to the students, it was made clear to them that the purpose was to test their pragmatic awareness and all the data collected would be used for research only Thus the students could concentrate themselves on the pragmatic aspects of the utterance when making their choices All was explained to the students in Vietnamese, their native language, in order to increase the students‘ comfort and understanding The students were allowed to consult dictionaries as well as the researcher for new words they had in understanding the answer options, which could ensure that there was no linguistic barrier for the subjects However, they were required to do the questionnaire individually None were allowed to leave before the scheduled time so as to avoid them trying to rush

to fill out the questionnaire in order to leave the class early They finished the questionnaire within forty-five minutes The response rate was 100% and all of the questionnaires were valid

2.3.4 Data analysis

The quantitative data were expressed in percentages and presented in the form of tables The quantitative data were used to measure the student participants‘ awareness of each speech act Then only qualitative data given by the participants who had the correct answer to each question were analysed using a content analysis technique to find general patterns or aspects of pragmatic awareness raised by the participants (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002) Then, these aspects were recorded together with the number of participants mentioning each aspect Student answers (in Vietnamese) were translated by the researcher Relevant quotations were then grouped together To avoid inconsistency or potential bias, data were analyzed and categorized by the researcher alone

In short, the chapter has described in details the setting of the study, the research methods, instruments and procedures used in this study Major findings will be presented and discussed in chapter three

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

Research findings from the questionnaire for native speakers show that all of them had the same answer to each question They all chose the most appropriate utterance from those given in each situation Correct answers to the questions are given in Appendix 3

In this part, the result of the research on students‘ pragmatic awareness will be analyzed and discussed, from the following 7 speech acts, namely greeting, addressing, introducing, requesting and responding, inviting, parting, and thanking and responding and one pragmatic aspect - choosing conversation topics The analysis and discussion of them will be shown respectively Aspects of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatic awareness concerning these speech acts were also reported by the students who had the correct response to each question

The average percentage of appropriate responses by speech acts is shown in the table below:

Table 3.1: Average percentage of appropriate responses by speech acts

It can be seen clearly from table 3.1 that the average percentage of appropriate responses to all speech acts addressed in the questionnaire was relatively low (34.5%) This indicates that the students‘ awareness of speech acts was below average It is also reflected from table 1 that the speech act of requesting and responding experienced the highest correct answer rate (56.5%) in the questionnaire This result was rather surprising because this kind of speech act is often a big challenge to learners and it is a directive speech act which intrinsically threatens the hearer‘s face and, therefore, it calls for considerable cultural and linguistic expertise on the part of the learners (Brown and Levinson, 1987) The lowest correct answer rate (15%) fell on the speech act of greeting which is a very common one

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3.1 Awareness of greeting

Greetings which can establish and maintain interpersonal relationships in everyday social interactions, differ greatly in verbal expressions and ways of greeting in different countries Vietnamese ways of greeting are different from typical English-language greetings, which makes it difficult for Vietnamese students to adopt Question 2, 5 and 6 were designed to test the students‘awareness of speech act of greeting

Speech act Item

Correct answer rate

Convention of forms

Convention of means

Table 3.2: Students’ awareness of greeting

Greeting is a popular speech act which students at VUC get familiar with right in their first academic year However, according to table 3.2, a small proportion of students (15.3%) had the correct answer For example, in question 2, only 44% of the student subjects chose the correct answer, B When asked to give a brief explanation for their choice, only two students who had the correct answer addressed their pragmalinguistic

awareness of conventions of means Examples were translated into English as follows: “I chose B because it is a conventional greeting.”, “This is the way of greeting that I have learnt and I often use.” The rest of the students who had the correct answer to this

question showed their sociopragmatic awareness when they indicated the relationship

between two interlocutors and the speaking setting: “B is the most appropriate to greet our friend the first time in a day.”

However, nobody identified the difference between ―Hello, how are you?‖ and

―Hello, how are you getting on?‖ American respondents claimed that in America, colleagues, friends or classmates usually use ―Hello, how are you?‖ when they meet for the first time in a day and greeting is quite brief and usually conventional in American culture ―How are you getting on?‖ is inappropriate unless the speaker knows what the hearer is doing at that time It is usually the case that native speakers tend to avoid talking about what is too concrete 36% of the student subjects chose A (Hi, Michael, how are you going?) As for answer D ―What wind brought you here?", which is a typical Vietlish, only 16% of the students chose this answer

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As for question 5, the respondents showed their low pragmatic awareness when only one student chose the correct answer, C, ―How are things?‖ This student only mentioned a pragmalinguistic aspect, that is convention of means, when explaining her

choice, “We use C because it is a general greeting.” A small majority of the students

(54%) chose A ―Hi, John, where are you going?‖ and 36% chose B ―Hi, have you eaten?‖ They claimed that these greetings are suitable in the context because these interlocutors

―meet each other right after dinner‖ These are popular greetings in Vietnamese culture because Vietnamese people prefer to talk about concrete things and they think that the more concrete what they are talking about is, the more care they show for the hearer However, for most Americans, this kind of greeting sounds impeding and may not be proper According to the surveyed Americans, they do not talk so concrete things because they may feel puzzled or annoyed, since asking such a question means interfering with others‘ business or privacy in their culture

In question 6, Tom unexpectedly met a friend he had not seen for years, he voiced his surprise: ―No!" None of the subjects chose the correct answer A (No) while half of them chose C (Oh) and another half chose D (Hey) The students were not aware of this kind of greeting because in American culture, ―No‖, besides negating something, can act

as an exclamation to convey speakers‘ surprise

3.2 Awareness of addressing

In communication, it is necessary for people to address each other Addressing plays an important role in cross-cultural communication because addressing shows the speaker's recognition of the hearer as a social being in his specific social status, and suitable addressing helps to establish, maintain and strengthen interpersonal relationship The inappropriate use of addressing terms will leave an impression of rudeness and stop the communication or breakdown the relationship Questions 4 and 17 in the questionnaire were designed to check students‘ pragmatic awareness of speech act

―addressing‖ The average percentage of students who chose the correct answer was 42%

Speech act Item

Correct answer rate

Convention

of forms

Convention of means

Nguyen Van Duc Elizabeth Mandel

(Surname) (Given name) (Given name) (Surname)

In Vietnamese culture, the right address is Mr Duc (given name) while in western way, Ms Mandel (surname) rather than Ms Elizabeth is right In America, there are some differences in addressing a woman with ―Miss‖, ―Mrs‖ or ―Ms‖ Normally, ―Ms‖ is preferred because the marital status of that woman is not mentioned, thus increasing the formality and politeness of the addressing In business situations, it is better to use formal titles unless the people you meet tell you otherwise

However, in question 4, only 24% of the students chose the correct answer, C (Glad to meet you, Ms Mandel) Sociopragmatic aspect concerning politeness was

reported by 6 of these students According to them, “C is appropriate because it is deferential to the woman.”, “I chose C because it is a formal situation” or “C is the most polite to speak to a woman for the first time.” None of the students identified the

difference between the use of first name and surname in English

According to the surveyed native speakers, American people prefer to be equal not only between people of roughly the same age, different age, but also people of different social status so they always address others by the given or the first name It is not a sign

of disrespect but a sign of equality For example, a child tends to address an older as Marry, and even Ben (the shortened version of the given name Benjamin) instead of Shelley and Franklin (the surname) respectively This includes his or her parents and grandparents However, in Vietnam, the given name is generally used by everyone regardless relationship, social status or power between interlocutors In question 17, 40%

of the subjects thought that it was inappropriate for Pham Hung to address Mr Black by his given name The questioned Americans stated that in the situation if after hearing ―My friends call me Andy‖, Pham Hung still insists on using his surname, Mr Black may regard him as aloof, excessively formal or unwilling to be friendly In their explanation, many subjects agreed that Mr.Black was older and in higher status than Pham Hung, so if Hung addressed him this way, this would show his disrespect to Mr Black Among 30

rest of the students who had the correct answer did not give correct explanations or explained nothing

3.3 Awareness of introducing

Introduction is often used to build up a good relationship between communicators

If performed improperly, an interaction will be broken down Questions 18 and 27 were designed to examine the subjects‘ awareness of introducing Table 3.4 shows that on average, only 24% of the participants could perform this speech act properly

Speech act Item

Correct answer rate

Table 3.4: Students’ awareness of introducing

In question 18, Hoa runs into Mai when Mai is talking with her foreign boss Mai introduces Hoa to her boss, 78% of the subjects considered Mai‘s introduction '‗Hoa, this

is Mr Smith, the manager of our department Mr Smith This is my friend, Hoa.‖ appropriate, because Vietnamese people often introduce their boss or the elders to their friends first in order to show respect to them However, in western culture, people first introduce persons of lower status to those of higher one and then persons of higher status

to those of lower one Therefore, Mai's introduction is improper in such a situation 2 students did not decide whether the introduction was proper or not Among 9 students

(18%) who had the correct answer, 4 students could explained soundly, “Mai should introduce Hoa to the boss before introducing the boss to Hoa.”

In Vietnamese culture, self-effacement, humility and modesty are good personalities Therefore, in question 27, 35 students accounting for 70% of the informants thought it was appropriate for Pham Ha to say ―I hope to get more of your guidance and

30 % of the students who had the correct answer, only 6 students were aware of cultural

norms in this situation when explaining, “I think saying like this is not appropriate because Pham Ha seems too modest Perhaps his foreign colleagues do not like this.”, “I think Pham Ha’s utterance will make his colleagues suspicious of his talent and look down on him.”

3.4 Awareness of requesting and responding

Requesting by definition, means to ask for something from others or ask others to

do something as the request or wishes, thus it will definitely threaten the negative face of the addressee Negative face is the desire of the individual not to be imposed on, while positive face is the desire of the individual to be liked and approved of As requests are to impose something on others, the politeness strategies are badly needed and play an important role in the request expression Although strategies of making a request are common in all societies, there still exist differences which Vietnamese students of English are not often aware of Questions 1, 3, 7, 8, 15,16, 20, 25 in the questionnaire were designed to identify the students‘ understanding of this speech act

Speech act Item

Correct answer rate

Table 3.5: Students’ awareness of requesting and responding

Firstly, the respondents were not conscious of selecting suitable request strategies

in different situations Most subjects assumed that the more formal the expression was, the more polite he or she would be in the encounter with a native speaker In fact,

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politeness is a relative concept and how polite and appropriate an utterance is in a given context depends on a number of factors Among these factors, relative status, social distance between the speaker and the hearer and ranking of imposition are the social variables that directly contribute to politeness decisions In question 25, only 5 students (accounting for 10%) had pragmatic awareness when indicating that the expression was not appropriate The rest found it appropriate because they judged the relative power or social distance between a taxi driver and a passenger differently from a native speaker According to the surveyed Americans, Hong had better not speak to a taxi driver in such a

formal way as, ―Excuse me, would you please take me to the airport?‖ The right utterance should be ―Airport, please.‖ In this situation, over-politeness is not tactful, thus

inappropriate Among 5 students who had the correct answer, one was aware of politeness

and pragmalinguistic facet regarding convention of forms: “It is not necessary to use the structure “Would please ” because it is too polite in this situation.” The facet of convention of means was mentioned by 5 students Some explanations are as follows, “I think it is too long.”, “Hong only needs to mention the destination That’s enough.”

In some cases, the subjects tended to produce longer requests than native speakers did This is illustrated clearly in questions 8 Nearly half of the informants (46%) chose C (Excuse me, would you please tell me if you are Mr Barnes?) The result shows that verbosity is a big problem to most of the subjects It may reflect the learners‘ desire to

―play it safe‖ by making the utterance meaning as transparent as possible This answer was not chosen by native speakers because in their explanation, it was too lengthy 34%

of the subjects chose the correct answer A (Excuse me, would you be Mr Barnes?) Among those who had the correct answer, 12 participants expressed their politeness

concerns by analysing relationship between the speaker and the hearer: ―Ms Kent did not know Mr Barnes, so she should be polite when asking to identify him.”, “Ms Kent should ask a polite question because it is a social interaction” or “Expression A is short but still conveys politeness.”, and pragmalinguistic awareness concerning convention of forms was reported by 5 students: ―“Excuse me” is used to get the attention of the hearer and “would you be” shows politeness when the speaker wants to identify the hearer.”

Vietnamese learners often fail to identify the illocutionary force of indirect speech acts, in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by another In other words, the speaker does not say what he wants to say directly; instead, he expresses his desire indirectly by another speech act It requires the hearer to infer what the speaker means to

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understand an indirect speech act Vietnamese learners of English, who are seldom exposed to everyday conversations of native speakers of English, often find it difficult to decide which meaning is assigned by the speaker when such utterances are made In question 15, by asking ―May I have the biscuits‖, the speaker may be asking for permission and he/she may also be requesting the hearer to pass him/her the biscuits In a given context such as one at a dinner table, only one force is likely That is requesting However, 84% of the students did not choose the right answer A [Sure (handing the biscuits over to that person)] Moreover, all of the students who had the correct answer were not aware of indirectness in this situation because they could not give any

explanations or explained irrelevantly, “I think so” or “We should be generous.”

In contrast, some questions enjoyed a greater number of the participants choosing the correct answer In imaginary situation 7, ―You had something to tell the manager, Mr Smith‖, a large proportion of the students (64%) chose B as the correct answer (Can I have a word with you, Mr Smith?) Among them, 10 students showed their

pragmalinguistic awareness concerning convention of means when explaining, “This is a direct request”, “I choose B because when I want to tell something to the manager, I should go straight to the point It can save time and won’t make my manager puzzled.” or

“This way of requesting is short but effective because it lets the manager know my intention.”; 21 students (42%) addressed politeness aspect when mentioning the relationship between the interlocutors, “I think B is suitable because I should be polite when I want to ask the manager something.” or “This can show my respect to my superior.” Some students were aware of both directness and politness when explaining

their choice However, 8 informants had no explanation or did not know why B is the correct answer

In questions 1 and 3, a same great number of students (84%) were aware of requesting when choosing the correct answer B (Could you tell me where Mr Mandes‘s office is?) and C (Can I use your phone, Peter?) respectively Strikingly, among those who had the correct answer, a rather large proportion addressed their pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic awareness in their answers For example, in question 1, pragmalinguistic awareness concerning convention of forms was reported by 9 students

(18%): ―“Could you ” is a structure used to request somebody politely.” 34 students mentioned politeness in their answers They explained, “It sounds polite and respecful to the receptionist because I do not know him/her Moreover, I am asking her/him to tell me

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where Mr.Mandes’s office is, so I need to be polite.” 1 student could not give a reason for

her choice In question 3, 16 respondents (32%) mentioned pragmalinguistic aspect

concerning convention of means All gave sound reasons for their choice, “I choose C because it is simple and direct To talk to a close friend, it is more suitable than D because D is too indirect.”, “It is a request in the form of a question.”, “C is direct and informal A is too lengthy and formal, so it is not suitable to use in conversation between close friends.” or “It is more natural to say that to a close friend.” 34 informants were

aware of sociopragmatic aspect relating to politeness Some examples of their

explanations are: “I chose C because the person whose phone I want to borrow is my close friend.”, “C indicates intimate relationship between two close friends.” However,

there were three respondents who had no explanations

Two requesting situations of high imposition, 16 and 20, were designed to check whether the students were aware of politeness relating to imposition or not In such a highly-imposed situation as 16, the speaker should release the force of imposition on the hearer because asking the boss for a pay rise is a really difficult situation In question 16,

a notable 90% of the students chose the correct answer, D (Well, it‘s a bit difficult, but I really feel that it‘s about time that I had a pay rise) Among them, 14 students were

conscious of pragmalinguistic aspect concerning convention of means, “I think in such a difficult situation, we should give out an excuse before asking for a pay rise.”,

“Beginning our request in such a tactful way can help the boss feel pleased to get our offer.” 19 students could not give out any explanations for their choice and a same number of the students were aware of politeness Examples were translated as follows: “I think D is the best answer because saying like this can release the force of imposition on the boss and does not make him feel that he is being requested.” or “I elect to use D because this not only shows our respect to the boss but also expresses our desire to get a pay rise.”

In question 20, Hanh says to her American boss when borrowing some money from him, ―Perhaps you could give it to me this Friday," This utterance is in the form of a statement, but an order in implication English native speakers may take ―Perhaps you could ‖ as an imposition rather than a request It might be more acceptable to say

―Could you possibly give it to me this Friday?‖ to an English speaker 70% of the subjects realized that it was inappropriate to say so to the boss Among them, 11 students

identified sociopragmatic aspect concerning politeness: “I think it is inappropriate

of forms was also addressed by 5 students One example is “I would say “Thank you” so that the boss can feel my sincere gratitude, thus lend me some money.”

3.5 Awareness of inviting and responding

Speech act Item

Correct answer rate

Table 3.6: Students’ awareness of inviting

Different cultures set different rules on how to offer an invitation and how to provide offers Since the ways of inviting, refusing and accepting an invitation in the English-speaking culture contrast sharply with those in Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese learners of English are not always aware of these speech acts Questions 10 and 19 were made to test the subjects' pragmatic awareness of these speech acts The correct answer rate by these speech acts was surprisingly low For example, in question 19, 68% of the subjects thought that it was inappropriate for Phuong to invite his American colleague by saying ―I‘m going to give a dinner party this Friday night Come if you want to‖ Most of them stated that Phuong was not sincere and enthusiastic enough by saying ―Come if you want to‖ This choice can be explained with differences between Vietnamese and American cultures In Vietnamese culture the act of inviting conveys great politeness for

it always manifests good will on the part of the inviter Normally, the inviter is always ready to repeat his/her invitation many times to show his/her sincerity, and the addressee will generally not decline the invitation at last because the refusal is supposed to threaten the speaker‘s face However, according to the surveyed Americans, in their culture,

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repeated invitations are considered improper and even rude In their view, others should not impede their freedom even though the invitations are made politely Therefore, the inviters always use the pattern ―I will have a , come if you want to‖ or ―How about ?‖

or ‗‗Would you like to ?‖ Among 32% of the students who considered this inviation

appropriate, 5 students were aware of this difference in two cultures One example is “I think it is an invitation which shows that Phuong does not impose his will on his colleague but gives options to make him feel free and not awkward.”

Besides, Vietnamese people seldom say ‗Oh, no, thanks‖ to refuse the invitation Instead, they often use gestures or facial expressions or shake their head to show rejection and say ―thank you‖ in order to be polite to the host In American culture, however, one is expected to give a direct answer to an invitation or offer rather than a simple ―thank you‖ Unaware of such differences, Vietnamese always commit mistakes while communicating with Americans As it was illustrated in question 10, 78% of the subjects chose C (Thank you), which would make the inviter confused, for he/she was not sure whether you would drink or not Only 14% chose the correct answer, B (Yes, please) The facets of politeness and strategies of accepting an offer were found by 1, and 2 students respectively The rest

of the students who had the correct answer coud not explain or explained improperly

3.6 Awareness of parting

As elicited from the surveyed American participants, parting means more than

―goodbye‖ because at the moment of parting, people tend to imply a future meeting, extend an invitation, express good wishes and show gratitude or concern, etc People have

to adopt some strategies to say ―goodbye" because some factors such as time, place, relationship need considering Inappropriate expressions may make the hearer feel embarrassed or annoyed, which may damage the relationship Questions 11, 12, 23 and 24

in the questionnaire were designed to identify the VUC students‘ pragmatic awareness of this speech act

Speech act Item

Correct answer rate

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In American culture, parting remarks are various such as ―Goodbye‖, ―Good night‖, ―Have a good day‖, ―Have fun‖, ―Good luck‖, ―I hope everything goes well with you‖, ―I‘m so pleased to have met you‖, ―See you later‖, ―Hope to see you again‖,

―Regards to your parents‖, ―Thanks for everything‖, etc In Vietnam, beside common parting expressions like ―Chào nhé‖, ―Tạm biệt nhé‖ or ―Hẹn gặp lại‖, the English equivalent of which are ―Bye‖, ―Good bye‖ and ―See you again‖, people sometimes say,

―Đi đường cẩn thận nhé‖ If this expression is literally translated into English as ―Please walk slowly‖ by Vietnamese learners, English native speakers will surely be puzzled and offended They would think, ―Why should I walk slowly? It‘s none of your business.‖ In question 23, 64% of the respondents found it appropriate, which is not correct However,

only 10 students (20%) were aware of strategies used in this situation: “Hai should thank the guest for visiting him and say something to express that he is looking forward to welcoming the guest in the next visit.‖, “He should say something to epxpress that he wants to meet that visitor soon.” The facet of convention of forms were also mentioned

by 2 students: “ “Please walk slowly” seems ambiguous and can make the visitor puzzled,

so it is not appropriate to adopt this structure.”, “It is not suitable in this situation, instead Hai should say, “See you again Good bye!”” 3 students were aware of politeness when explaining, “It is not polite to say so.”, “It is impolite because it doesn’t show Hai’s hospitability.”, “It is not polite because it can leave the visitor an implication for something else.‖

In question 11, 68% of the students chose the correct answer, A (Thank you for a lovely afternoon.) 13 informants (26%) could explain their choice clearly by mentioning

politeness, “I think A is the choice because it is polite and appropriate to the situation, showing the guest’s gratitude for the host’s hospitality.” One student claimed, “I think the setting here is in America, so the guest should do what Americans do Therefore, A is the correct answer.” The facet of pragmalinguistic awareness concerning conventions of means was reported by 15 students Examples are given as follows: “It is a conventional ritual to separate”, “Before parting, we should thank the host for a lovely time spent in his house.” “Thanking the host is the most suitable to show our gratitude.” However,

there were three students who could not give out their explanations The reason might be that their choice was dictated by feeling without their understanding of this pragmatic aspect

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In western culture, it is considered impolite for a guest to leave in a hurry In question 12, ―At a party or social occasion, how would you indicate that it was time for you to leave?‖, only 16% of the subjects chose the correct answer, A (It‘s getting late and I‘d better be going) This is a polite way to let others know your intention, but 48% of the subjects chose B (I‘m sorry to have caused you so much trouble, goodbye), which is inappropriate Among the students who had the correct answer, 2 students were aware of

the strategy employed when parting: “We should mention the setting and state directly our intention that we want to leave the party.” One student admitted that he chose A

because in the films that he had seen he noticed that actors and actresses often said so The researcher put this into the sociopragmatic awareness concerning cultural norms section

In question 24, Viet Anh was invited to a westerner‘s party, he took leave of the host by saying, ―I must be off now I've got something important to do‖ To Vietnamese people, it means, ―It is my pleasure to take part in the party, but I‘m forced to leave for something urgent.‖ This is understandable to Vietnamese people, but westerners may find

it most insulting, because according to their understanding, the speaker implies that the party is a waste of time and not important at all and they can hardly understand the real implication of Viet Anh In this question, 42% of the subjects considered it inappropriate

to speak in such a way In their explanations, 8 students (16%) showed their

pragmalinguistic awareness concerning convention of means: “I think Viet Anh should thank the host”, “He should say something like: I want to stay longer, however, I have something to do now He shouldn’t use: I have something important to do.”, “It is inappropriate because it is too harsh.”, “It is too direct and can make the host unhappy.”

8 students were aware of sociopragmatic aspect when mentioning politeness in their

explanations: “It seems too impolite to the host.”, “Viet Anh should say more politely.”,

“By saying this he doesn’t show respect to the host.”

3.7 Awareness of thanking and responding

Although ―Thank you‖ is widely used in both English and Vietnamese to show gratitude, for example, when one is invited, helped or given a gift, etc., there exist cultural differences between Vietnamese and English in expressing and responding to thanks Questions 13, 14, 21, 22 in the questionnaire are related to this speech act