A STUDY OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS REFUSALS IN ENGLISH AT CAM PHA HIGH SCHOOL

Moreover, politeness strategies, which is used to soften the threat to each other's face is also very important to help a conversation successful but Vietnamese culture affects politenes

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THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DAO THI HOA

A STUDY OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS' REFUSALS IN ENGLISH

AT CAM PHA HIGH SCHOOL

Nghiên cứu về việc học sinh THPT Cẩm Phả sử dụng tiếng Anh để từ chối

M.A THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION)

Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201

Supervisor : Dr Nguyen Trong Du

THAI NGUYEN – 2019

to drink?” my friend said: "A cup of tea, please" but I replied: "No, thanks" Then she brought out just only two cups of tea, one for her and one for my friend I felt a bit surprised because normally in our Vietnamese home, we often offer some kinds

of drink to everyone who comes to see us although the guess often says to the host:

Oh, there's no need or you are so careful Such a situation let me think a lot about

the differences in culture between Vietnamese and Western people That means the Vietnamese often do not directly say what they actually mean, but the West prefer a direct speech act and it is easier to understand

The given situation raised us a question that to learn a language means we also have to learn more about another culture As a non-native teacher of English, I find myself that it is not enough just to show learners words, structures, and other language patterns, but we also have to guide them how to use the language into real life situations effectively and naturally

It is pragmatics that helps us a lot in dealing with such problems Pragmatics

is a branch of linguistics dealing with the language in use and the context in which

it is used And in pragmatics, speech act is an element that a speaker performs when making an utterance We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, a greeting,

a request, a complaint, an invitation, a compliment or a refusal It means speech acts realize real-life communications

Therefore, when English teachers are following the communicative approach

in teaching, certain aspects of language use as speech acts need to be taken into

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account The refusal speech act used by high school students is a problem which gains much my attention

The first concern is the high school students' communicative competence It

is inevitable to all teachers of English in communicative language teaching (CLT) The language learners' environment as CLT techniques, the interaction with one another, authentic texts, in class and outside of class is a consideration However, with my experience in teaching high-school students, many of them cannot reply a request, an offer in the way the English native speakers do, especially in refusing, they may cause misunderstanding or even face threatening to the hearer

The next matter is the content of textbook (Tieng Anh 10, 11, 12 )( both 7 years and 10 years) Each unit includes 4 skills and language focus in which the authors have tried to provide authentic materials for the students to practice However, how to adapt these sources to be suitable for students to make use of them

in communication is a concern Moreover, politeness strategies, which is used to soften the threat to each other's face is also very important to help a conversation successful but Vietnamese culture affects politeness strategies, especially the ways high school students refuse an offer, an invitation, a suggestion because of the indirect ways of refusing in the way the Vietnamese often do to others

This study was conducted with the expectation to find out how high school students refuse to an invitation and a request, whether there is any difference between what they think they will refuse and the way they really refuse in a given situation From the data analysis, I will know more about how Vietnamese cultural influence on their way of speaking English After that, some suggestions will be noted down to help work out the more effective ways of teaching English according

to communicative language teaching approach

1.2 Aims of the study

The overall of the study aim is to explore how Vietnamese culture affects refusing strategies in English by Vietnamese high school students From the

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investigation, this study will help to find out to what extent Vietnamese high school students can apply their knowledge into practice, and to suggest some ways for integrating cultural practices into the high shool curriculum

1.3 Research questions

Following the aims, the study tries to answer the two questions as

(1) How do high school students refuse in English?

(2) Are there any differences between the written and spoken refusals?

1.4 Scope of the study

This study focuses on refusing speech act to the invitations and requests in English made by high school students The study is conducted at Cam Pha High School in Quang Ninh province 200 students of grade 10 at Cam Pha High School are involved in the study The study has been carried out in the second semester of academic year 2018-2019 with only 10th graders; thus, the respondents does not represent for all students who study English major in Vietnam These students are surveyed to work out how they refuse to the invitations and requests in English and which Vietnamese cultural practice affects their refusing speech act

1.5 Significance of the study

The present study partly contributes to provoke both theoretical and practical utilization of English in communicative situations for the learners Theoretically, in spite of certain number of studies previously conducting the investigation into the refusals in English, they mainly discuss the difference between the ways Vietnamese respond to a situation and the ones of the Western people In practice, the speech acts such as the invitations, the offers or requests and how to respond them are one of the key points in communicating in daily lifestyles However, there has been some gaps between the syllabus for teaching English at high schools and the ability of using English of students authentically Thus, this study with a view to finding out the gap between the English in current textbooks and everyday English

in the aspects of culture will help students get access to practical English Furthermore, for the teachers of English, this study is believed to raise the question

of the importance of shifting their teaching approach from teacher-centered to

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student-centered This is relevant to the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, which has been boosted in the English teaching lessons in education system of all levels in Vietnam in recent years

1.6 Design of the study

The study is divided into three main parts: the Introduction, the Development and the Conclusion with Reference with five chapters

Chapter 1: Introduction - deals with the rationale, aims, scope, methods,

significance and design of the study

Chapter 2: Literature Review- is about to give some theoretical

background related to pragmatics, speech acts, refusing strategies, politeness strategies, semantic formulas, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and previous studies relating to the topic of the research

Chapter 3: Methodology- shows the research governing orientation,

research methods and performs the situation analysis, participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures and data analysis The detailed results of the DCT and role-play and a universal analysis on the collected data are shown

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions - presents major findings and

discussions from the data collected in both DCT and role-play

Chapter 5: Conclusion- concludes a review of the study, limitations of the

study and recommends suggestions for further researches

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Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

It is stated in the previous chapter that the object of this study is the refusals in English made by the Vietnamese high school students The refusal is one of the speech acts in everyday life and speech acts are core issues of pragmatics, a branch of linguistics All of these concepts will be described in this chapter

2.1 Pragmatics and speech act theory

2.1.1 Pragmatics

Pragmatics has been emerged as a branch of modern linguistics because it is the "science of language as it is used by real, live people, for their own purposes and within their limitations and affordances" (Mey, 1993, p 5) Pragmatics is used

to be defined as "the study of language in use" (G Brown & Yule, 198, p 27)

Jenny Thomas in Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics (1995)

mentions pragmatics as "a study of meaning in interaction" The advent of pragmatics helps to answer the question of why an utterance is semantically correct but it may cause misunderstanding for the hearers if they do not know in which context the speaker delivered the utterance

Pragmatics has played such a preliminary role in teaching and learning English procedure Teaching and learning English as EFL has been paid much attention worldwide because English an international language that connects people all around the world However, English is spoken in different settings and levels of intercommunication among all English speakers who do not share a language or a culture As a result, speakers must know many pragmatic elements in order to avoid inaccuracies and misunderstandings during communication As a matter of fact, such a great usage of English language requires a pragmatic competence which will help all those who speak or learn English as a second language Thomas defined pragmatic competence as “… the ability to analyze language in a conscious manner.” (cited in Holmes & Brown, 2007, p 524) The meaning includes verbal

Pragmatic transfer in refusals is also a remarkable concern It is likely that L2 learners may rely on their native language pragmatic knowledge to perform the target language refusals which may result in pragmatic failures It occurs when speakers apply rules from their first language (L1) to their second language (L2) Beebe et al (1990), for example, reported evidence of pragmatic transfer in refusals made by Japanese learners of English It was found that the content of excuses in both Japanese and English made by Japanese learners of English was far less specific than the content of excuses made by American participants

Language proficiency is also an important factor in pragmatic transfer, although the analysis has not led to conclusive results Takahashi and Beebe (1987) proposed the positive correlation hypothesis, predicting that L2 proficiency is positively correlated with pragmatic transfer Despite the fact that Takahashi and Beebe’s own study on refusals performed by Japanese EFL and ESL learners did not clearly present the predicted proficiency effect, some studies (e.g Cohen & Olshtain, 1981; Blum-Kulka, 1982; Olshtain & Cohen, 1989; Cohen, 1997; Hill, 1997; Keshavarz et al., 2006) have supported Takahashi and Beebe’s notion that learners’ limited target language knowledge prevents them from transferring native language pragmatic knowledge For example, Takahashi and Beebe’s (1987) results

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showed that highly proficient Japanese ESL learners often used a typically Japanese formal tone when performing refusals in L2 Also as mentioned by Keshavarz et al (2006), more proficient students had enough control over the L2 to express their first language feelings at the pragmatic level

2.1.2 Speech acts

In the field of pragmatics, speech acts represent a key concept It can be broadly defined as language use in context taking into account the speaker’s and the addressee’s verbal and non-verbal contributions to the negotiation of meaning in interaction It is a unit in which the speakers perform what they want to express by producing utterances According to Austin (1962), a single speech act actually contains three separate but related speech acts: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts According to Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay's in Philosophy of Language: The Central Topics (2007), locutionary acts are "the mere acts of producing some linguistic sounds or mark with a certain meaning or reference" Meanwhile, further Austin considers locutionary act as the act of saying something which has a meaning and creates an understandable utterance to convey

or express In his point of view, illocutionary act is performed as an act of saying something or as an act of opposed to saying something The illocutionary utterance has a certain force of it It is well-versed with certain tones, attitudes, feelings, or emotions There will be an intention of the speaker or others in illocutionary utterance It is often used as a tone of warning in day today life Therefore, it can be seen as an offer, an apology, a promise an invitation, a request or a reply to a question Perlocutionary act normally creates a sense of consequential effects on the hearers The effects may be in the form of thoughts, imaginations, feelings or emotions The effect upon the addressee is the main characteristic of perlocutionary utterances

Pragmatics is also the performance of speech acts Austin, together with his collaborator, Searle, presented their speech act theory basically on single sentences and only on the speaker' point of view Therefore, his theory has been shown out

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many drawbacks with much criticism from other authors Hatch (1983) argued that

"the same sentences may have the different meanings when said in different situations Archer et al., (2012) replaced "speech acts" with "a discourse act" or

"communicative act" Thus, speech acts also take the hearer's perception and reception into consideration

2.2 Refusals and the refusing strategies

2.2.1 Refusing definition

As mentioned in the speech acts, the illocutionary utterance as can be seen as

an offer, an apology, a promise, an invitation, a requests or a reply to a question In this study, one of the illocutionary utterances will be observed and investigated is the refusal to an invitation and a request

Refusing can be understood as the speaker directly or indirectly says no to

his/her interlocutor’s request, invitation or suggestion Searl (1977) re-classifies speech acts into five categories and he categorizes refusals into commissives because they commit the refuser to not performing an action Meanwhile, Brown and Levinson (1987) stated that refusals are face-threatening acts and in the same way as disagreeing and disapproving Refusing is an act that expresses the refuser's negative evaluation to the refusee' prior act, threatening the positive face want of a refusee and showing little care about the refusee's feelings

Gass & Houck (1999) mentioned refusals as speech acts that occur as negative responses to other acts such as requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions Brown and Levinson (1987), Fraser (1990), Smith (1998) also agree that refusals are sensitive to social variables such as gender, age, level of education, power and social distance Hence, refusals are significant to explore the various cultural aspects of language from the sociolinguistic perspective Brasdefer (2006) claims that refusals are complex speech acts that require not only long sequences of negotiation and cooperative achievements, but also ‘‘face - saving maneuvers to accommodate the noncompliant nature of the act.” (Gas and Houck, 1999, P.2) In general, refusing is a speech act consisting of both social and linguistic patterns

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2.2.2 Refusing strategies

Refusing is complex issue and this speech act has attracted researchers’ attention as mentioned Among the existing studies, the most influential and best-known study on refusals is namely Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy In their study, they use DCT as a tool to examine how Japanese learners

of English refused requests, invitations, offers and suggestions Their

classification is divided into semantic formulas, which are the expressions used to

perform a refusal and adjuncts, that is, expressions which occur with a refusal but

themselves not be used to perform a refusal The two components - semantic formulas and adjuncts- are described as follow:

Classification of Refusals

I Direct

A Performative (e.g., “I refuse”)

B Non performative statement

1 “No’

2 Negative willingness/ability (“I can’t.” “I won’t.” )

II Indirect

A Statement of regret (e.g., “I’m sorry…”)

B Wish (e.g., “I wish I could help you…”)

C Excuse, reason, explanation (e.g., “I am busy with my homework")

D Statement of alternative

1 I can do X instead of Y (e.g., “I’d rather…”)

2 Why don’t you do X instead of Y

(e.g., “Why don’t you ask someone else?”)

E Set condition for future or past acceptance

(e.g., “If I am invited next time…”)

F Promise of future acceptance

(e.g., “I promise I’ll…” or “Next time I’ll …” – using “will” of promise

or “promise”)

G Statement of principle (e.g., “ I never do business with friends.”)

H Statement of philosophy (e.g., “One can’t be too careful.”)

I Attempt to dissuade interlocutor

1 Threat of statement of negative consequences to the requester (e.g., “I won’t be any fun tonight” to refuse an invitation)

5 Let interlocutor off the hook (e.g., "Okay." “Don’t worry about it.”)

6 Self-defense (e.g., “I’m trying my best.” )

J Acceptance that functions as a refusal

1 Unspecific or indefinite reply

c Repetition of part of request, etc (e.g., “Monday?”)

d Postponement (e.g., “I’ll think about it.”)

e Hedging (e.g “I’m not sure.”)

Adjuncts to refusals

1 Statement of positive opinion/feeling or agreement (“That sounds good …”;

“I’d love to…”)

2 Statement of empathy (e.g., “I realize you are in a difficult situation”)

3 Pause fillers (e.g., “er”; “well”; “oh”; “uhm”)

4 Gratitude/appreciation

Following the classification, the refusers may employ some refusing strategies to respond to certain speech acts They can say "No" to refuse a request,

an offer or an invitation in a direct way

However, due to the face-threatening nature the refusal involves, which means it threatens the addressee’s negative face, refusing usually includes various strategies which aim to avoid offending the other interlocutor Indirectness strategies are frequently used to avoid face- threatening of a refusal According to

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Al- Eryani (2007), “refusal is a face-threatening act to the listener/ requester/ inviter, because it contradicts his or her expectations, and is often realised through indirect strategies”(p.21) Indirectness is a highly-used strategy in Vietnamese refusing It can be seen from the studies of the Vietnamese writers such as M T P Nguyễn (2006), T V Q Phan (2001), and C M Trần (2005c) All of them agree that indirectness is a preferred refusing strategy to avoid confrontation and conduct defense Beebe et al, (1990) shows that the indirectness of refusing results in the fact that the message of a refusal is often hidden in another speech act such as a blame, a complaint, a topic switch, a joke or a statement of principle

Refusing in fact is a complex issue However, this speech act has been a concern to many writers who carried out various studies on this aspect They are Kitao (1996), Felix-Brasdefer (2003), Al-Kahtani 2005, Tran, C M (2005c), Bardovi-Harlig et al-2008, Campillo (2009), Ebsworth, M.E & Kodama-2011 (See References) In these studies, the writers have shown many differences in refusing among English learners from different cultures Vietnamese culture is not an exception Vietnamese refusing speech act is a topic that has been conducted in

many studies such as Phương thức biểu hiện hành vi từ chối lời cầu khiến trong tiếng Anh (liên hệ với tiếng Việt) by Tran Chi Mai (2005c), (2005d), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Refusals of requests by Australian native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English by Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong (2006), and The culture of Vietnamese refusing: A mixed-methods multi-perspectival approach by

Nguyen Trong Du (2016)

2.2.3 The notion of face in politeness and refusing strategies

It is obviously realized from the findings of the previous studies on refusals

in English that indirect strategies is preferred due to the savings or threatening avoidance

“Face” is “something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced and must be constantly attended to interaction.” (Brown and Levinson,1987, p.66) According to Brown and Levinson (1987), an individual's

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face needs motivate us to apply politeness strategies Face here refers to the

individual's self-esteem, and these authors mention that both positive face and negative face are wished to be maintained by all individuals Goffman (1967) gives the definition of "face work" - the way in which people maintain their face He also describes politeness in as "the appreciation an individual shows to another through avoidance or presentation of rituals".( Interaction Rituals: Essays in Face-to-face Behaviour, p.77) Meanwhile Leech (1983) considers politeness as forms of behavior aim at creating and maintaining harmonious interaction Based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) framework of politeness, three kinds of politeness systems:

1) difference, 2) solidarity, and 3) hierarchical and two contextual variables, a) power and b) distance between participants, are involved in determining the

politeness system are proposed by Scollon, Scollon and Jones (2012) In Vietnamese culture, the framework can be seen obviously through the way people greet and address the others in daily conversations

One factor that closely relates to politeness is face-threatening act (FTA) Nguyen Thi Mai Phuong (2006) recommends in her dissertation that in daily communication, people may pose a threat to another individual’s self-image, or create a “face-threatening act” (FTA) These acts impede the freedom of actions (negative face), and the wish that one’s wants be desired by others (positive face) – by either the speaker, or the addressee, or both Requests potentially threaten the addressee’s face because they may restrict the addressee’s freedom to act according to his/her will (Holtgraves 2002, p.40) Refusals, on the other hand, may threaten the addressee’s positive face because they may imply that what he/she says is not favored by the speaker In an attempt to avoid FTAs, interlocutors use specific strategies to minimize the threat according to a rational assessment of the face risk to participant

2.2.4 Refusing in relation to Vietnamese politeness strategies

Assessment of the face risk to the other interlocutor is also a typical feature

of Vietnamese culture, which results from the influence of Confucianism ideology

Brown and Levinson (1987) are probably considered the most influential authors in politeness theory They produce the following figure shows strategies that are chosen when a speaker does an FTA to a listener Face threatening acts (FTAs) can be done:

+ on the record - unambiguously and with a certain directness, it show exactly what the actor has in mind

+ off the record - ambiguously and with a certain indirectness, the actor cannot be held to a particular intent

+ baldly, without redress - clearly, unambiguously and in the most direct manner (e.g Do X! / Don't do Y)

+ with redress – to give face and counteract potential face damage

Figure 1: Brown and Levinsons (1987) - Strategies for doing an FTA

and hearer Here it is one of the linguistic functions that express the social distance between speakers and their different role relationships It is the face-work which is

an attempt to establish, maintain, and save face during conversations carried out in

a speech community

Different languages are distinguishable from each other in employing which politeness strategies in conducting speech acts Refusing is not an exception Deference is heavily paid much attention to in Vietnamese refusals because of deeply- seated beliefs by Confucian philosophies Take Japan for example Japan is also an Asian country like Vietnam In a study, a Japanese writer, Ueda (1972), listed 16 ways to avoid saying "No" in Japanese (Vague no, silence, delaying

answers, among others) Some years later, Rubin (1983) claimed that there were the following 9 ways of refusing across a number of cultures:

In an early attempt to classify the realization of refusals,

1 Be silent, hesitate, show a lack of enthusiasm

6 General acceptance of an offer or an invitation but giving no details

7 Divert and distract the addressee

8 General acceptance with excuses

9 Say what is offered is inappropriate

It is universally agreed among many studies on refusals that Vietnamese people choose the same strategies in refusing to an invitation or a request without having to say "No" in a direct way

2.3 The previous studies on refusals

2.3.1 Cross-cultural refusal studies

Kwon (2004) agrees that refusing can be a difficult speech act to perform appropriately both linguistically and psychologically because the possibility of offending the interlocutor is inherent in the act itself and a failure to refuse appropriately can risk the interpersonal relationship Nguyen Trong Du (2016) claims that refusing usually includes various strategies which are aimed at avoiding offending the other interlocutor Therefore, the previous cross-cultural refusal studies are dealing with the refusals under the aspect of cultural influence Zohreh Rasekh Eslami (2010) has a conclusion that the cross-cultural studies on refusals show that different cultures perform refusals differently Their degree of directness in refusals, their sensitivity to social variables, and their performance in terms of the content of strategies might vary

Many authors agreed on the face-threatening nature of refusals T Al- Eryani (2007, p 21) d e f i n e d refusal as a face-threatening act to the listener/ requester/inviter, because it contradicts his or her expectations, and is often realized through indirect strategies H J Chen (1996) also claimed a direct refusal as a simple negative is not a common strategy for communicators,

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regardless of their language background Thus, it is undeniable that the face - threatening nature results in the use of indirectness of refusing strategies From the Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy, it can be seen the fact that the indirectness of refusing the message of a refusal is often hidden in another speech act such as a blame, a complaint, a topic switch, a joke, a statement of principle so on and so forth (see Beebe et al, 1990)

In addition, some Vietnamese writers, such as T M P Nguyen (2006), T.V Q Phan (2001), and C M Trần (2005c) all reached the conclusion that indirectness is a highly-used strategy in Vietnamese refusing Most participants employed indirect refusals to respond to a request, an invitation or a suggestion to avoid confrontation and offence

The differences in cultural practices among the countries are the key linguistic resources in cross-cultural studies In the dissertation of Nguyen Trong

Du (2016), he shows the two points of views of Thomas (1983) dealing with pragmatics She argued that when dealing with students’ pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication, pragma-linguistic failure can be easier to fix than socio-pragmatic failure She claimed this is because the linguistic conventionalized forms “can be taught quite straightforwardly as ‘part of the grammar’ whereas socio-pragmatic failure relates to the student’s cultural beliefs

as much as his/her knowledge of the language

In general, the cross-cultural studies on refusals gain a conclusion that despite the sharing of similar strategies in refusing among different cultures, the choice of directness, mitigation and the explanation or reasons for a refusal may vary across the cultures

2.3.2 Interventional studies on refusals

While there are a number of studies which investigate refusal speech act from cross-cultural perspectives, the number of interventional studies on the effects

of instruction on learners' acquisition of polite refusal strategies is restricted The writers such as King & Silver, 1993; Morrow, 1996; Kondo, 2001, 2008; Bacelar

Morrow (1996) studied the effect of instruction on learners’ production of refusals and complaint speech acts His study followed a pre-test/post-test design, without a control group He adopted an explicit approach which included explanation of semantic formulas, controlled output practice, and role plays for teaching the intended speech acts The results of the study showed that learners improved both in clarity and politeness However, the delayed post-test results (6 months after) did not display a significant treatment effect The weakness of the study is that the non-significant delayed post-test results could be attributed to the small number of participants who came for the post-test

Kondo (2001), a Japanese writer, conducted another interventional study on refusals involving thirty-five Japanese learners of English Her study on refusals is the most recent study in this area She examined the instructional effects after teaching the learners with methods and materials that were specifically developed for teaching pragmatics to Japanese Similar to Morrow’s (1996) study, this study used a pre-test/post-test design without a control group A DCT was used for both pre-test and post-test data The results showed the effectiveness of instructional treatment and a change in learners’ refusals approximating target language

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(American English) refusals The instructional procedure raised awareness concerning various pragmatic aspects involved in the speech act of refusals reflects the content of the class discussions

Overall, the interventional studies on English refusals reveal the effectiveness of instruction on pragmatic development of learners On the other hands, the aspect of linguistic applications has been a concern to researchers, educationists and teachers They have been trying to work out the link between the pragmatics and English communication approach Both cross-cultural studies and interventional studies on English refusals employ Beebe et al.’s (1990) classification of refusal strategies to cover refusal strategies in response to invitations, requests, suggestions, and offers Their classification system of strategies is therefore all-inclusive, and can be used for teaching refusals that are the second pair part of any of these speech acts

Therefore, in the current study, in order to maintain focus and be practical, only refusals to invitations and requests are examined The refusees are only Vietnamese high school students, thus no comparison between the native English speakers and non-native counterparts was made In terms of cultural aspects, this study is about to show any factors that may affect interlocutors when refusing in English

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLODY

This study was conducted in order to examine that how Vietnamese culture affects high school students in choosing the refusing strategies when they are engaged in the daily conversations in English To achieve the purposes, this study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods - mixed methods approach

3.1 Study method

This study investigates how Vietnamese high school students refuse in English and explore whether there is any difference between the written and spoken refusals; hence, there was a need to examine high school students in both categories of using English: writing and speaking refusals in English To check the students' written refusals, the written DCT in form of a survey questionnaire was delivered to collect data in a short period of time over 200 students of grade 10 at Cam Pha High School Additionally, role-play was used to gather data in the form of spoken refusals made by the participants who had attended the DCT The point from using these instruments is

to form a complete understanding about the study and make the findings more valid and objective through a mixed method research

Mixed methods research has increased in popularity in recent years

According to Cresswell (2014, 4th ed.) in Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed method Approaches, mixed method is “an approach to

inquiry that combines both qualitative and quantitative forms of research It involves philosophical assumptions, the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches, and the mixing or integrating of both approaches in a study.” Mixed method research has been defined as “the class of research where the researcher mixes or combines quantitative and qualitative research techniques, methods, approaches…in a single study” (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004, p.17) Manfred

Max Bergman (2012) in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Mixed Methods Research and Design concluded that “Despite these weaknesses, challenges, or unresolved problems, MMRD (mix method research design) often offers

considerable advantages compared to mono- method research It can cross-validate

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or complement individual findings, and it may be able to combine different strands

of knowledge, skills, and disciplines.”

All these claims of the researchers do not mean that mixed methods research may provide perfect solutions The quantitative is itself considered objective, focused, outcome-oriented approach to inquiry Muijs and Daniel (2010) emphasize that quantitative research aims at "gathering numerical data and generalizing it across groups of people or to explain a particular phenomenon." A study using quantitative research means that its design and method are structured, inflexible, specified in detail in advance of study Therefore, quantitative research following controlled-experiment, case study and survey has a positivist worldview, in which it

is independent from participants with random sampling Meanwhile, qualitative research, another research method is subjective, time-consuming and less able to be generalized, and the researcher is the data gathering instrument, in which data is in the form of words, pictures or objects (Miles & Huberman (1994, p 40) However, quantitative research and qualitative research, the two basic methods in research design for many years, have been still “in a classical debate” (James Neil, 2007) on the view of individuals The quantitative method disregard the researcher as a part from the social group, whilst, the qualitative method supports relativism which hinders the systematic standards for judging research quality In this case, mixed method is a solution to harness the advantages of both quantitative and qualitative method and minimize their weaknesses This method attempts to fit together the insights of quantitative and qualitative research into a workable solution and superior results

This study used the quantitative method which provides collected data from the written DCT to answer the first research question To deal with the second research issue, qualitative method with the role-play instruments helped the researcher recording refusals in prepared situations These two research methods not only help the researcher answer the two research questions step by step but also may give more objective, reliable and valid results for the study In summary, mixed methods is the suitable methods that make this study obtain the purposes

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The researcher gave further explanation about the purposes of completing the tasks in the questionnaire to the participants Furthermore, the researcher let the participant 30 minutes to go through six situations and write down the answer to fulfill the tasks

In the two following weeks, 20 of these participants were asked to join the role-play The researcher invited two native- speakers to act together with the students The researcher observed and recorded the conversations between the participants Among 200 participants of the survey questionnaire, 20 of them were selected to be the respondent in the role-play situations This method helps to find out how students refuse to such invitations and requests without any time to

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considerate their respondents It is also a hint to investigate the difference between written and spoken refusals Each situation is conducted among a foreigner and a Vietnamese high school student They took the role as shown in the questionnaire and are given further explanation and information about the aims of this study The foreigners are the native speakers from America and England They are working as English teachers at an English teaching center The students and foreigners are volunteers and remain anonymous in the study

3.3 Data collection instruments

DCT (written DCT- survey questionnaire) and Role-play (closed role- play) are the two data collection instruments used in this current study The first stage of the study, written DCT instrument was conducted among these students During the period of nearly 2 months, a questionnaire survey with two different kinds of speech acts as requests and invitations were delivered and the randomly selected students were asked to write down their refusals to these patterns On the second stage, role-play was implemented 20 of the participants were given some situations and they were asked to making refusals spontaneously The recorder is used to keep track of these conversations These conversations took place inside the classroom at a high school On the third stage, data collected by a questionnaire survey and recordings, were analyzed and afterward a conclusion has been withdrawn

Both DCT and Role play are used as data collection instruments for this study for the following reasons Firstly, DCT under a questionnaire survey provided evidences for how high school students identify a request, an invitation, a suggestion or an offer and how to refuse them in the ways that they think it is appropriate , enough polite and natural that does not threat the speaker's face and achieve the communicative goals However, DCT has many drawbacks that have been shown in many studies; the written language let students sometimes to think about the refusals, so it may not be practical and authentic

Secondly, role- play will help to check students' refusals to given situations The way they refuse instantly to the given situations will check how students use

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English in everyday communications Although role-play is shown in some studies still not "really authentic, natural language provided", it is a tool to help find out the difference between the students' written and spoken language proficiency and how Vietnamese culture influence on their English speaking ability Here, the role-play description indicated that the students were classmates and the foreigners involved were their teachers, so they did not interact socially with one another outside of class According to (Fraser 1990; Spencer-Oatey 1996), the conceptual of social status and social distance vary across cultures and among researchers, thus in this study the variables understood as follows: Status is understood in term of hierarchical relationship of Vietnamese culture originating the influences of Confucianism in Chinese domination period Distance is understood in terms of the degree of familiarity between two interlocutors of different statuses as specified in the role-play scenarios

Overall, despite some remain shortcomings of these tools, DCT and role-play are the relevant choice for conducting this study

3.4 Data analysis

This study used the written DCT and role play as the research instruments, so qualitative and quantitative descriptive analysis were used in this study to analyze the data Collected data were presented in summary tables, which help the research sort out the rate and the proportion of the refusal strategies in accordance with the variables

The data were in the form of questionnaires, recording and transcripts for the refusals In the first step of collecting the data, the data that were reflected in the DCT and role-play were collected, the research questions was reviewed, then the collected data were classified into to patterns, ideas or trends that seem to answer research

questions were browsed

Second step is coding the data Based on the overview of the data collected from the written DCT and role-play that the researcher has developed, the researcher

After the comparing step, interpretations were built The data were put deep thoughts about what are saying by reflecting beyond the immediate surface details, then the researcher looked for more abstract ‘big picture’ concepts and not just step-by-step descriptions of what had been found Then the researcher raised questions, identified connections, and developed explanations about what the research means at the broadest level of understanding of it and refining the researcher’s ‘personal theories’ about the meanings of this research

The last step is reporting the outcomes The researcher thought about how the research could be presented and what has been found to tell others The researcher considered how to organize the whole ‘story of the study’ from beginning to end and not just the analysis and findings

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Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The results collected from the students’ questionnaires and role-play recordings will be presented, analyzed and explained in this chapter From the data, the issues are discussed in order to deal with the research questions about the refusal strategies which 10th graders at Cam Pha high school employed in responding to the situations in written and spoken forms Afterwards, some suggestions and recommendations will be drawn up for enhancing the communicative language teaching approach among the students at Cam Pha high school in particular and at other high schools in Viet Nam in general As mentioned above, 200 copies of the questionnaire were given to 200 students in 10A8, 10A9, 10A10, 10A11 who were asked to complete the tasks in the questionnaire Besides the students’ questionnaire, role -plays were conducted with 20 students after taking part in the survey The questionnaire for students is in English but the researcher gave further explanation to make sure that there is no misunderstanding of the situations Due to the exposure to the tasks in the questionnaire, 20 students who joined the role-play were not vague about the context of the situations

Due to space constraints, the six refusal situations utilized in this study are briefly described below:

i A student refuses a graduation party invitation from the head teacher

(Graduation) (H, A)

ii A student refuses a movie invitation from two good friends (Movie) (E, I)

iii A student refuses a birthday party from a neighbor (Birthday) (E, A)

iv A student refuses a request of tutoring the cousin in Maths (Tutoring) (L, I)

v A student refuses a request from the mother to buy her some fruits (Buying) (H, I)

vi A student refuses a request from an old lady to give her a lift (Lifting) (H, S)

The six situations given are the daily lifestyles consisting of three invitations and three requests were the measurements for the expecting results