Nghiên cứu về việc học sinh trung học phổ thông cẩm phả sử dụng tiếng anh để từ chối

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

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 từchối

M.A THESIS (APPLICATION

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

The idea that brings me to the topic of this study originated from my ownstory happening 15 years ago when I was a student at Thai Nguyen University Onemorning, I and one of my classmates went to see our American teacher, Diane.When we had just been invited to sit down, she asked," Would you like something

to drink?” my friend said: "A cup of tea, please" but I replied: "No, thanks" Thenshe brought out just only two cups of tea, one for her and one for my friend I felt abit 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 theVietnamese often do not directly say what they actually mean, but the West prefer adirect speech act and it is easier to understand

The given situation raised us a question that to learn a language means wealso have to learn more about another culture As a non-native teacher of English, Ifind myself that it is not enough just to show learners words, structures, and otherlanguage patterns, but we also have to guide them how to use the language into reallife 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 whenmaking 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 actsrealize 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

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 oneanother, 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 arequest, 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 7years and 10 years) Each unit includes 4 skills and language focus in which theauthors 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 tosoften the threat to each other's face is also very important to help a conversationsuccessful but Vietnamese culture affects politeness strategies, especially the wayshigh school students refuse an offer, an invitation, a suggestion because of theindirect ways of refusing in the way the Vietnamese often do to others

This study was conducted with the expectation to find out how high schoolstudents refuse to an invitation and a request, whether there is any differencebetween what they think they will refuse and the way they really refuse in a givensituation From the data analysis, I will know more about how Vietnamese culturalinfluence on their way of speaking English After that, some suggestions will benoted 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 affectsrefusing strategies in English by Vietnamese high school students From the

investigation, this study will help to find out to what extent Vietnamese high schoolstudents can apply their knowledge into practice, and to suggest some ways forintegrating 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 inEnglish made by high school students The study is conducted at Cam Pha HighSchool in Quang Ninh province 200 students of grade 10 at Cam Pha High Schoolare involved in the study The study has been carried out in the second semester ofacademic year 2018-2019 with only 10th graders; thus, the respondents does notrepresent for all students who study English major in Vietnam These students aresurveyed to work out how they refuse to the invitations and requests in English andwhich Vietnamese cultural practice affects their refusing speech act

1.5 Significance of the study

The present study partly contributes to provoke both theoretical and practicalutilization of English in communicative situations for the learners Theoretically, inspite of certain number of studies previously conducting the investigation into therefusals in English, they mainly discuss the difference between the waysVietnamese 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 respondthem are one of the key points in communicating in daily lifestyles However, therehas been some gaps between the syllabus for teaching English at high schools andthe ability of using English of students authentically Thus, this study with a view tofinding 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

student-centered This is relevant to the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)approach, which has been boosted in the English teaching lessons in educationsystem 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 Developmentand 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, politenessstrategies, semantic formulas, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), andprevious 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 collectioninstruments, data collection procedures and data analysis The detailed results of theDCT 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

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 thespeech 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 isthe "science of language as it is used by real, live people, for their own purposesand 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 ofpragmatics helps to answer the question of why an utterance is semantically correctbut it may cause misunderstanding for the hearers if they do not know in whichcontext the speaker delivered the utterance

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

and non-verbal elements and it varies according to the context, to the relationshipbetween utterers, also to many other social factors.

Pragmatic competence should be considered as a optimum goal for all thosewho teach English as a second language, which constantly represents a challengingtask as well Pragmatic competence refers to the ability to comprehend, constructutterances which are accurate and appropriate to the social and culturalcircumstances where the communication occurs Pragmatics can be simplyunderstood as a way we convey the meaning through the communication inpractice For the learners, especially students at school, pragmatics can be seen asthe concrete evidence of students' ability of speaking English to achievecommunication goals

Pragmatic transfer in refusals is also a remarkable concern It is likely thatL2 learners may rely on their native language pragmatic knowledge to perform thetarget language refusals which may result in pragmatic failures It occurs whenspeakers apply rules from their first language (L1) to their second language (L2).Beebe et al (1990), for example, reported evidence of pragmatic transfer in refusalsmade by Japanese learners of English It was found that the content of excuses inboth Japanese and English made by Japanese learners of English was far lessspecific 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 ispositively correlated with pragmatic transfer Despite the fact that Takahashi andBeebe’s own study on refusals performed by Japanese EFL and ESL learners didnot 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 thatlearners’ limited target language knowledge prevents them from transferring nativelanguage pragmatic knowledge For example, Takahashi and Beebe’s (1987) results

showed that highly proficient Japanese ESL learners often used a typically Japaneseformal 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 theirfirst language feelings at the pragmatic level.

2.1.2 Speech acts

In the field of pragmatics, speech acts represent a key concept It can bebroadly defined as language use in context taking into account the speaker’s and theaddressee’s verbal and non-verbal contributions to the negotiation of meaning ininteraction It is a unit in which the speakers perform what they want to express byproducing utterances According to Austin (1962), a single speech act actuallycontains three separate but related speech acts: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts,and perlocutionary acts According to Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay's inPhilosophy of Language: The Central Topics (2007), locutionary acts are "the mereacts of producing some linguistic sounds or mark with a certain meaning orreference" Meanwhile, further Austin considers locutionary act as the act of sayingsomething 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 sayingsomething or as an act of opposed to saying something The illocutionary utterancehas a certain force of it It is well-versed with certain tones, attitudes, feelings, oremotions There will be an intention of the speaker or others in illocutionaryutterance It is often used as a tone of warning in day today life Therefore, it can beseen as an offer, an apology, a promise an invitation, a request or a reply to aquestion Perlocutionary act normally creates a sense of consequential effects on thehearers The effects may be in the form of thoughts, imaginations, feelings oremotions The effect upon the addressee is the main characteristic of perlocutionaryutterances

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

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

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

"communicative act" Thus, speech acts also take the hearer's perception andreception 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 Inthis study, one of the illocutionary utterances will be observed and investigated isthe 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-classifiesspeech acts into five categories and he categorizes refusals into commissivesbecause they commit the refuser to not performing an action Meanwhile, Brownand Levinson (1987) stated that refusals are face-threatening acts and in the sameway as disagreeing and disapproving Refusing is an act that expresses the refuser'snegative evaluation to the refusee' prior act, threatening the positive face want of arefusee and showing little care about the refusee's feelings

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

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., “Iwon’t be any fun tonight” to refuse an invitation)

2 Guilt trip (e.g., waitress to customers who want to sit a while: “I can’tmake a living off people who just order coffee.”)

3 Criticize the request/requester, etc (statement of negative feeling oropinion); insult/attack (e.g., “Who do you think you are?”)

4 Request for help, empathy, and assistance by dropping or holding the request

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 refusingstrategies 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, whichmeans it threatens the addressee’s negative face, refusing usually includes variousstrategies which aim to avoid offending the other interlocutor Indirectnessstrategies are frequently used to avoid face- threatening of a refusal According to

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 throughindirect strategies”(p.21) Indirectness is a highly-used strategy in Vietnameserefusing 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 agreethat indirectness is a preferred refusing strategy to avoid confrontation and conductdefense Beebe et al, (1990) shows that the indirectness of refusing results in thefact that the message of a refusal is often hidden in another speech act such as ablame, 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 aconcern to many writers who carried out various studies on this aspect They areKitao (1996), Felix-Brasdefer (2003), Al-Kahtani 2005, Tran, C M (2005c),Bardovi-Harlig et al-2008, Campillo (2009), Ebsworth, M.E & Kodama-2011 (SeeReferences) In these studies, the writers have shown many differences in refusingamong English learners from different cultures Vietnamese culture is not anexception 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-“Face” is “something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost,maintained, or enhanced and must be constantly attended to interaction.” (Brownand Levinson,1987, p.66) According to Brown and Levinson (1987), an individual's

face needs motivate us to apply politeness strategies Face here refers to theindividual's self-esteem, and these authors mention that both positive face andnegative face are wished to be maintained by all individuals Goffman (1967) givesthe definition of "face work" - the way in which people maintain their face He alsodescribes politeness in as "the appreciation an individual shows to another throughavoidance or presentation of rituals".( Interaction Rituals: Essays in Face-to-faceBehaviour, p.77) Meanwhile Leech (1983) considers politeness as forms ofbehavior aim at creating and maintaining harmonious interaction Based on Brownand 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) InVietnamese culture, the framework can be seen obviously through the way peoplegreet 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 dailycommunication, people may pose a threat to another individual’s self-image, orcreate 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 theaddressee’s face because they may restrict the addressee’s freedom to actaccording 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 whathe/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 rationalassessment 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

remnants It decides whether the addresser use the politeness strategies or not in refusing a request, an invitation or an offer and so on.

According to Nguyen Trong Du (2016), to understand how people uselanguage, for example what strategies they use in refusing and why they rely onsuch strategies, one must get to know about their cultural backgrounds The refusermay commit the face-threatening act when the refusee is at a higher social status,more powerful and he/she appreciate the closer distance This is also a culturalfactor discussed by Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov (2010) They argue thatsuperiors are people who have the privilege to make their own rules and to initiatecontact with subordinates Employees are thus expected to do as they are told andtherefore expect their ideal boss to be a “benevolent autocrat or a ‘good father'" (p.73)

Brown and Levinson (1987) are probably considered the most influentialauthors in politeness theory They produce the following figure shows strategiesthat 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

Their figure showing the strategies for doing FTA consists of two types of politeness strategies: positive strategies and negative strategies.

Following the figure, positive politeness strategies are those which show thecloseness, intimacy, and rapport between speaker and hearer and negativepoliteness strategies are those which indicate the social distance between speaker

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 whichpoliteness strategies in conducting speech acts Refusing is not an exception.Deference is heavily paid much attention to in Vietnamese refusals because ofdeeply- seated beliefs by Confucian philosophies Take Japan for example Japan isalso 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 werethe 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

2 Offer an alternative

3 Postponement

4 Blame on a third party or something over which you are out of control

5 Avoidance

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 Vietnamesepeople choose the same strategies in refusing to an invitation or a request withouthaving 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 performappropriately both linguistically and psychologically because the possibility ofoffending the interlocutor is inherent in the act itself and a failure to refuseappropriately can risk the interpersonal relationship Nguyen Trong Du (2016)claims that refusing usually includes various strategies which are aimed at avoidingoffending the other interlocutor Therefore, the previous cross-cultural refusalstudies are dealing with the refusals under the aspect of cultural influence Z oh rehR

a s e k h E s l a m i (2010) has a conclusion that the cross-cultural studies on refusalsshow that different cultures perform refusals differently Their degree of directness

in refusals, their sensitivity to social variables, and their performance in terms ofthe content of strategies might vary

Many authors agreed on the face-threatening nature of refusals T Eryani (2007, p 21) d e f i n e d refusal as a face-threatening act to thelistener/ requester/inviter, because it contradicts his or her expectations, and

Al-is often realized through indirect strategies H J Chen (1996) also claimed

a direct refusal as a simple negative is not a common strategy forcommunicators,

regardless of their language background Thus, it is undeniable that the face threatening nature results in the use of indirectness of refusing strategies Fromthe Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy, it can be seen thefact that the indirectness of refusing the message of a refusal is often hidden inanother speech act such as a blame, a complaint, a topic switch, a joke, astatement 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 thatindirectness is a highly-used strategy in Vietnamese refusing Most participantsemployed indirect refusals to respond to a request, an invitation or a suggestion toavoid confrontation and offence

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

Du (2016), he shows the two points of views of Thomas (1983) dealing withpragmatics She argued that when dealing with students’ pragmatic failures incross-cultural communication, pragma-linguistic failure can be easier to fix thansocio-pragmatic failure She claimed this is because the linguisticconventionalized forms “can be taught quite straightforwardly as ‘part of thegrammar’ 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 thatdespite the sharing of similar strategies in refusing among different cultures, thechoice of directness, mitigation and the explanation or reasons for a refusal mayvary across the cultures

2.3.2 Interventional studies on refusals

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

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

Da Silva, 2003 conducted their interventional studies and have made significant contribution to apply pragmatics in teaching and learning English process.

In King and Silver's study (1993), a pre-test/post-test treatment with acontrol group design is used, and taught polite refusal strategies to six intermediatelevel learners of ESL Discussions of personal experience, reading and analysis ofdialogues, explicit teaching, and role-plays were implemented during a seventy-minute class However, the learners had not many opportunities for out- put practicebecause of time constraints A discourse completion questionnaire as a pre-test andpost-test and telephone talks as a delayed post-test were used as research tools Theresults showed limited effect of instruction on the written post-test and no effect onthe delayed post-test The authors reveal that the lack of exposure to natural data asinput and limited output practice opportunities could have caused the minimumeffect of instruction

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

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

(American English) refusals The instructional procedure raised awarenessconcerning various pragmatic aspects involved in the speech act of refusals reflectsthe content of the class discussions.

Overall, the interventional studies on English refusals reveal theeffectiveness of instruction on pragmatic development of learners On the otherhands, the aspect of linguistic applications has been a concern to researchers,educationists and teachers They have been trying to work out the link between thepragmatics and English communication approach Both cross-cultural studies andinterventional studies on English refusals employ Beebe et al.’s (1990)classification of refusal strategies to cover refusal strategies in response toinvitations, requests, suggestions, and offers Their classification system ofstrategies is therefore all-inclusive, and can be used for teaching refusals that are thesecond 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 onlyVietnamese high school students, thus no comparison between the native Englishspeakers and non-native counterparts was made In terms of cultural aspects, thisstudy is about to show any factors that may affect interlocutors when refusing inEnglish

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLODY

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

3.1 Study method

This study investigates how Vietnamese high school students refuse inEnglish and explore whether there is any difference between the written and spokenrefusals; 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 tocollect data in a short period of time over 200 students of grade 10 at Cam Pha HighSchool Additionally, role-play was used to gather data in the form of spokenrefusals made by the participants who had attended the DCT The point from usingthese instruments is to form a complete understanding about the study and make thefindings 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 Itinvolves philosophical assumptions, the use of qualitative and quantitativeapproaches, and the mixing or integrating of both approaches in a study.” Mixedmethod research has been defined as “the class of research where the researchermixes 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

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 researchmay provide perfect solutions The quantitative is itself considered objective,focused, outcome-oriented approach to inquiry Muijs and Daniel (2010) emphasizethat quantitative research aims at "gathering numerical data and generalizing itacross groups of people or to explain a particular phenomenon." A study usingquantitative research means that its design and method are structured, inflexible,specified in detail in advance of study Therefore, quantitative research followingcontrolled-experiment, case study and survey has a positivist worldview, in which it

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

This study used the quantitative method which provides collected data fromthe written DCT to answer the first research question To deal with the secondresearch issue, qualitative method with the role-play instruments helped theresearcher recording refusals in prepared situations These two research methods notonly help the researcher answer the two research questions step by step but also maygive more objective, reliable and valid results for the study In summary, mixed

3.2 Study design

3.2.1 Participants

This study, an attempt to find out how high school students at Cam Pha highschool refuse in English both in written and spoken forms, was designed as aexploratory research The sample size of the study is 200 10th-grade studentsselected randomly at Cam Pha High School in Quang Ninh province They haveexperienced the pilot Tieng Anh 10 textbooks at school They were surveyed by thewritten DCT in form of questionaires and 20 of them participated in the role play inclass The participants are 10th graders from 5 classes in the academic year of2018/2109 at Cam Pha High School

3.2.2 Study procedure

To conduct this present study, the researcher has taken some steps as thefollowing description

First, the researcher went over the previous studies, selected the form

of questionnaire which could be adapted to cater for the purposes of the study.Second, to explore the students' refusals, the researcher edited the different dailysituations in the form of a survey questionnaire, afterwards prepare the recorder forthe role-play The next step is delivering questionnaires to the students selectedrandomly from the Grade

10 classes

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

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

considerate their respondents It is also a hint to investigate the difference betweenwritten and spoken refusals Each situation is conducted among a foreigner and aVietnamese high school student They took the role as shown in the questionnaireand are given further explanation and information about the aims of this study Theforeigners are the native speakers from America and England They are working asEnglish teachers at an English teaching center The students and foreigners arevolunteers 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 ofthe study, written DCT instrument was conducted among these students During theperiod of nearly 2 months, a questionnaire survey with two different kinds of speechacts as requests and invitations were delivered and the randomly selected studentswere 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 theywere asked to making refusals spontaneously The recorder is used to keep track ofthese conversations These conversations took place inside the classroom at a highschool 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 thisstudy for the following reasons Firstly, DCT under a questionnaire survey providedevidences for how high school students identify a request, an invitation, asuggestion or an offer and how to refuse them in the ways that they think it isappropriate , enough polite and natural that does not threat the speaker's face andachieve the communicative goals However, DCT has many drawbacks that havebeen shown in many studies; the written language let students sometimes to thinkabout 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

English in everyday communications Although role-play is shown in some studiesstill not "really authentic, natural language provided", it is a tool to help find out thedifference between the students' written and spoken language proficiency and howVietnamese culture influence on their English speaking ability Here, the role-playdescription indicated that the students were classmates and the foreigners involvedwere their teachers, so they did not interact socially with one another outside ofclass According to (Fraser 1990; Spencer-Oatey 1996), the conceptual of socialstatus and social distance vary across cultures and among researchers, thus in thisstudy the variables understood as follows: Status is understood in term ofhierarchical relationship of Vietnamese culture originating the influences ofConfucianism in Chinese domination period Distance is understood in terms of thedegree of familiarity between two interlocutors of different statuses as specified inthe role-play scenarios.

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

3.4 Data analysis

This study used the written DCT and role play as the research instruments, soqualitative and quantitative descriptive analysis were used in this study to analyzethe data Collected data were presented in summary tables, which help the researchsort out the rate and the proportion of the refusal strategies in accordance with thevariables

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

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

started refining it by coding the data into more specific patterns of the

semantic formulas, identified which of the data sources the researcher can code quantitatively

Comparing the data is the next step Once the coding is completed, theresearcher compared the categories or patterns across the research’s different sets ofdata (refusals form the written DCT compared to spoken refusals in role-play) to seewhether they say the same thing or whether there are contradictions that theresearcher can highlight, then developed summary tables set the data out anddisplay them in a concise form

After the comparing step, interpretations were built The data were put deepthoughts about what are saying by reflecting beyond the immediate surfacedetails, then the researcher looked for more abstract ‘big picture’ concepts and notjust step- by-step descriptions of what had been found Then the researcher raisedquestions, identified connections, and developed explanations about what theresearch means at the broadest level of understanding of it and refining theresearcher’s ‘personal theories’ about the meanings of this research

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

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The results collected from the students’ questionnaires and role-playrecordings 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 refusalstrategies which 10th graders at Cam Pha high school employed in responding tothe situations in written and spoken forms Afterwards, some suggestions andrecommendations will be drawn up for enhancing the communicative languageteaching approach among the students at Cam Pha high school in particular and atother high schools in Viet Nam in general As mentioned above, 200 copies of thequestionnaire were given to 200 students in 10A8, 10A9, 10A10, 10A11 who wereasked to complete the tasks in the questionnaire Besides the students’questionnaire, role -plays were conducted with 20 students after taking part in thesurvey The questionnaire for students is in English but the researcher gave furtherexplanation to make sure that there is no misunderstanding of the situations Due tothe exposure to the tasks in the questionnaire, 20 students who joined the role-playwere not vague about the context of the situations

Due to space constraints, the six refusal situations utilized in this study arebriefly 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