A study of dispreferred second turns used in part a listening section of toefl pbt

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Faculty OF Post-graduate STUDIES ---o0o--- NGUYEN THI OANH A STUDY OF DISPREFERRED SECOND TURNS

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Faculty OF Post-graduate STUDIES

-o0o -

NGUYEN THI OANH

A STUDY OF DISPREFERRED SECOND TURNS USED

IN PART A – LISTENING SECTION OF TOEFL PBT

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CÂU ĐÁP KHÔNG ĐƯỢC ƯU TIÊN

TRONG PHẦN A – NGHE HIỂU TOEFL PBT)

Field: MA in English Linguistics Code: 60.22.02.01

Training Program: Type 1

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Faculty OF Post-graduate STUDIES

-o0o -

NGUYỄN THỊ OANH

A STUDY OF DISPREFERRED SECOND TURNS USED

IN PART A – LISTENING SECTION OF TOEFL PBT

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CÂU ĐÁP KHÔNG ĐƯỢC ƯU TIÊN

TRONG PHẦN A – NGHE HIỂU TOEFL PBT)

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.02.01

Training Program: Type 1 Supervisor: Dr Kiều Thị Thu Hương

DECLARATION

I hereby, certify the thesis entitled “A study of Dispreferred Second

Turns used in part A – Listening Section of TOEFL PBT”is the result of my

own research for the Minor Degree of Master of Arts in English Linguistics at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National

University, Hanoi The thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other universities or institutions

I agree that the origin of my thesis deposited in the library can be

accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the

normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan and

reproduction of the paper

Hanoi, October 1st, 2013

Signature

Nguyen Thi Oanh

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my special thanks to Dr Kieu Thi Thu Huong, my supervisor, for her exciting lectures on Pragmatics, her valuable advice and continual supports without which I could not have finished my thesis

I owe Assoc Prof Dr Le Hung Tien my deep debt of gratitude for his useful and interesting course in Research Methodology, which provides me with indispensable techniques to complete this thesis

My heartfelt thanks go to all the staff, teachers and members at Faculty of Graduate Studies - University of Languages and International Studies - Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their work and services

Post-Especially, I would like to show my profound gratitude to all the librarians at Faculty

of Post-Graduate Studies during my searching for reference books Their enthusiastic cooperation is really precious towards the results of my study

I would like to express my warmest thanks to my family for their support and encouragement during the completion of this research

Finally, I am also grateful to all the authors whose books, newspapers and magazines I have referred to

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this thesis is discovering the general patterns of dispreferred second turns and the common linguistic features indicating them in part A – Listening Comprehesion Section of TOEFL PBT based on the theoretical frameworks of pragmatics and conversation analysis

The corpus of the study consists of 50 dialogs containing dispreferreds in Part A Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used to find out the answers to the research questions

There are some findings in the research In the first place, the five patterns of

dispreferreds, namely assessment-disagreement, invitation-refusal,

proposal-disagreement, offer-declination and request-refusal, are all used in Part A and the

pattern assessment-disagreement is the most common one Also, there are eight common linguistic elements indicating dispreferreds among which ‗give an account‟

ranks the most The data analysis also points out that each linguistic feature is priorly used in one or some certain patterns of dispreferreds

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV LISTS OF TABLES & FIGURES VI ABBREVIATIONS & CONVENTIONS VII

PART I - INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the Problem 1

2 Research Question 2

3 Objectives of the study 2

4 Significance of the study 3

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Design of the study 4

PART II - DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Speech Acts 5

1.1.1 Definition 5

1.1.2 Common kinds 5

1.2 Conversation Analysis 6

1.2.1 Definition 6

1.2.2 Turn-taking 7

1.2.3 Adjacency pairs 7

1.3 Preference structure 9

1.3.1 Definition 9

1.3.2 General patterns of preference structure 10

1.3.3 Dispreferred second turns 11

1.4 Dispreferreds in Part A - Listening Comprehension of TOEFL PBT 14

1.5 Previous works 17

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 19

2.2 Methodology 19

2.3 Procedure 20

2.4 Findings and discussion 21

2.4.1 General patterns of dispreferreds 21

2.4.2 Common linguistic features of dispreferreds 22

PART III - CONCLUSION 34

1 Recapitulation 34

1.1 The common patterns of dispreferreds 34

1.2 The linguistic features signaling dispreferreds 34

2 Suggested tips for TOEFL PBT learners or potential test-takers 36

3 Implications for English language learning and test taking 37

4 Limitations of the research 39

5 Suggestions for further research…….………40 REFERENCES

LISTS OF TABLES & FIGURES

CONTENTS

Table 1 - Correlations of content and format in adjacency pair seconds

Table 2 - The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures

Table 3 - Linguistic elements indicating dispreferred second turns

Table 4 - Listening Comprehension Format in Standard Form

Figure 1 - Common patterns of dispreferred second turns

Figure 2 - Linguistic features indicating dispreferreds

ABBREVIATIONS & CONVENTIONS

 ETS Educational Testing Service

 ASEAN The Association of South East Asian Nations

 APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

 TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language

 TOEFL PBT Test of English as a Foreign Language Paper-Based Test

 TOEFL CBT Test of English as a Foreign Language Computer-Based test

 TOEFL IBT Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-Based Test

 IELTS International English Language Testing System

 TOEIC Test of English for International Communication

 (( )) ―some phenomenon that the transcriber does not want to wrestle with‖ or some non-vocal action, etc

 hh an audible out-breath, hh an in-breath

PART I INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the Problem

Since 1986, after having launched its open-door policy ―Doi Moi‖, Vietnam has gone through remarkable changes to be a market economy and set up relations with more than 200 countries and regions in the world It also became a member of many important organizations such as ASEAN, AFTA, APEC, ASEM, WTO and so on In this converging trend, Vietnam is becoming more and more involved in international trade and investment

To keep track of this globalization trend, the Vietnamese government has encouraged its citizens to learn English As a result, English has become the most popular foreign language studied in schools and colleges Also, some international certificates like TOEIC, TOEFL and IELTS have gradually become a requirement for college graduates and employees who need to achieve academic success as well as effective communication

As a matter of fact, learners of English often find these tests quite challenging, especially the listening part as mentioned by Brown (2006:1), ―Listening in another language is a hard job‖ To take TOEFL PBT Listening Part as an example, its materials often include dialogs, academic lectures and long conversations that require test-takers to have to infer the speakers‘ implicit ideas, attitudes or purposes Thus, besides the language competence, test-takers need pragmatic knowledge to do the tests

However, up to now, few studies on the barriers TOEFL PBT test-takers have encountered have been carried out Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate a

small aspect of pragmatics and conversation analysis - common patterns of

dispreferred second turns and linguistic units to signal them in Part A - Listening

Comprehension Section of TOEFL PBT tests in order to work out some tips that help test-takers to cope with these kinds of questions

In short, the crucial role of TOEFL tests, the difficulties facing TOEFL test-takers, the lack of attention of the previous papers and self-interest in Pragmatics are the

motivation for the author to conduct the study on ―Dispreferred second turns used in

Part A – Listening Section of TOEFL PBT”

2 Research Question

The research seeks the answer to the following question:

What are the general patterns of dispreferred structures and the common linguistic features indicating them in Part A - Listening Comprehension Section of TOEFL PBT?

More obviously, to solve the research question, the study is conducted to:

 Provide readers with basic knowledge of speech acts, conversation analysis, adjacency pairs and preference structure

 Find out the general patterns of dispreferred structures used in Part A - Listening Section of TOEFL PBT

 Examine the linguistic features signaling dispreferred responses in Part A - Listening Comprehension of TOEFL PBT

 Provide potential test-takers with practical knowledge to deal with TOEFL PBT questions containing dispreferred-second-turn questions

4 Significance of the study

First and foremost, this paper can be used as a useful reference source for teachers as well as learners who have been teaching and studying TOEFL PBT It enables them to understand conversation analysis, adjacency pairs, preference structure, dispreferreds, their general patterns and the linguistic units signaling them more deeply Good understanding and full consciousness can help them deal with listening questions in Part A - TOEFL PBT more easily At the same time, deep knowledge can let them communicate in English in a more natural and effective way, particularly when giving

an indirect decline, refusal or disagreement

Secondly, teachers and learners of TOEFL PBT can use the paper as a handbook to seek some tips to cope with questions that contain dispreferred-second-turn responses

in Listening Comprehension Section

Last but not least, researchers of related fields can also use the paper for reference and suggestions for deeper studies

Due to time constraints and within the framework of a minor thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Linguistics, the present study only investigates the small aspects of preference structure: the

common patterns of dispreferred-second acts and the frequently used linguistic features to indicate them in Part A - TOEFL PBT Listening Section

The research focuses on the analysis of the transcripts of 50 out of 300 dialogs that contain the utterances of dispreferreds in Part A - Listening Comprehension taken

from 10 Complete Practice Tests of three books including TOEFL Success 2000 by Bruce Rogers, The Heinle & Heinle TOEFL Test Assistant Listening by Milada Broukal and TOEFL Practice Tests Volume 3 by ETS

6 Design of the study

The study includes three parts:

Part I is the Introduction of the study which states the problem, the research question, objectives, scope, significance and design of the entire paper

Part II is the Development which consists of two chapters Chapter 1 presents the

theoretical background related to the topic Chapter 2 includes database of the

study, methodology, data analysis procedure, and discussion of data analysis

Part III is the Conclusion which summarizes major findings of the investigation

and provides implications for teaching and learning TOEFL PBT This part also

points out some limitations of the research & makes suggestions for further studies

PART II DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Speech Acts

1.1.1 Definition

It goes a broad consensus that of all the issues in the general theory of language usage, the speech act (SA) theory has probably aroused the widest interest After Austin‘s initial investigation into SAs a few decades ago, the notion of SAs has become one of the most exciting notions to take a close look at

In linguistic pragmatics, SAs have remained the central phenomena that every general pragmatic theorist must take into account That is the reason why there have been a great number of works on SAs carried out by many philosophers and linguists such as Grice (1957, 1975), Searle (1969), Levinson (1983), Thomas (1995) and Yule (1996) Most of these linguists and philosophers share the common idea that when producing utterances, interlocutors also perform actions, i.e ―in saying something the speaker (S) does something‖ (Austin, 1962)

Briefly speaking, ―actions performed via utterances‖ are called speech acts (Yule,

1996: 47) According to Searle (1969: 16), these SAs, considered ‗the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication, are performed in authentic situations of language use

1.1.2 Common kinds

In English, SAs are commonly given specific labels such as greeting, assessment,

offer, agreement, disagreement, compliment, apology, complaint, invitation, request, refusal, blame, acceptance, denial, admission, question, answer, proposal or promise

These terms for SAs are used to name the S's communicative intentions and the hearer (H) is expected to correctly interpret the S's intentions via the process of inferences

For example,

 “Hi, Mary How are things going?"  greeting

 "Could you lend me your pen, please?"  request

1.2 Conversation Analysis

1.2.1 Definition

The term ―conversation‖ may be taken to be the familiar predominant ―type of talk in which two or more participants freely alternate in speaking, which generally occurs outside specific institutional settings like religious services, law courts, classrooms and the like‖ (Levinson , 1983: 284) In other words, conversation can be understood as talks produced in ordinary human interactions Levinson does not see conversation as

a structural product as the sentence but the outcome of the interaction of two or more independent, goal-directed individuals, with often divergent interests

The approach used to analyze conversations is called conversation analysis (CA)

which, at its core, in Sidnell‘s words (2010), is a set of methods for working with audio and video recordings of talk and social interaction It is regarded as a social-science approach that has the primary purpose of describing, analyzing and understanding talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human social life

Also discussing CA, Hutchby & Wooffitt (2008) calls it ‗the study of recorded, naturally occurring talk-in-interaction‘ that aims to discover how speakers understand and respond to one another in their turns at talk CA serves as a central focus on how sets of action are generated In other words, the aim of CA is to uncover the often tacit reasoning procedures and sociolinguistic competencies underlying the production and interpretation of talk in organized sequences of interaction

The purpose of CA, according to Levinson (1983: 287), is to discover the systematic properties of the sequential organization of talk, and the ways in which utterances are designed to manage such sequences CA has to satisfy two requirements First, its methods need to be inductive - search is made for recurring patterns across many records of naturally occurring conversations Second, the emphasis should be put on the interactional and inferential consequences of the choice between alternative utterances

When it comes to the analytic studies on English data, local management organizations

in conversation, namely turn-taking and adjacency pairs, cannot be omitted

1.2.2 Turn-taking

According to Levinson (1983: 296), it can be easily seen that conversation is characterized by turn-taking: one participant, A, talks, stops; another, B, starts, talks, stops; and we obtain A-B-A-B-A-B distribution of talk across two participants

To share this opinion, Yule (1996: 71) also states that the structure of conversation is based on ―analogy with the workings of a market economy‖ in which there is a scarce commodity - the floor or the right to speak Having control of this right at any time, the speaker gets a turn In any situation, where control is not fixed in advance, anyone can attempt to get control, we have turn-taking

minimization, etc., are prototypical

Yule (1996: 77) calls adjacency pairs ―automatic patterns/sequences in the structure

of conversations‖ that always ―consist of a first part and a second part produced by

different speakers‖ Adjacency pairs, according to Yule, can be greeting-greeting, question-answer, thank-response, request-acceptance, etc For example,

Anna: Hello Bill: Hi

Anna: How are you? Bill: Fine!

Anna: See ya! Bill: Bye!

Thornbury & Slade (2006) show that an adjacency pair consists of two turns made by different speakers which are placed adjacently and where the second utterance is

identified as related to the first An adjacency pair can be include question-answer;

complaint-denial; offer-accept; request-grant; compliment-rejection; rejection, and instruct-receipt According to Thornbury & Slade (2006), adjacency pairs typically have three characteristics: they consist of two utterances; the utterances are adjacent, i.e the first immediately follows the second; and different speakers produce each utterance

challenge-In addition, adjacency pairs, in Yule‘s perspective, are not simply contentless noises in sequence They represent social actions, and not all of social actions are equal when they occur as second turns of some pairs

Levinson (1983: 306-07) states that there is a problem that arises with the notion of an adjacency pair concerns the range of potential seconds to a first part The problem here

is that a first part may, in fact, receive a great many acceptable responses rather than the fixed one in its pair For instance, a question can have some proper responses other than

an answer such as protestations of ignorance, re-routes, refusals to provide an answer, and challenges to the presuppositions or sincerity of the question:

A: What does John do for a living?

B: a Oh that and this

b He doesn‟t

A: Yes // how many tubes would you like sir? ((Q1)) B: Er, hh I‟ll tell you what I‟ll just eh eh ring you back I have to work

out how many I‟ll need Sorry I did- wasn‟t sure of the price you see

(Levinson, 1983: 305) Therefore, although the response to a first part may be limited, they certainly do not form a small set This does seem to undermine the structural significance of the idea of adjacency pair that is revived by the concept of preference organization/ structure

1.3 Preference structure

1.3.1 Definition

Yule (1996: 78) mentions that basically, a first part that contains a request or an offer

is typically made in the expectation that the second part will be an acceptance An acceptance is structurally more likely than a refusal This structural likelihood is called

preference Preference is the term used to indicate a socially determined structural

pattern and does not refer to any individual‘s mental or emotional desires Sharing this attitude, Levinson (1983: 332-333) claims that the notion of preference is not intended

as a psychological claim about speaker‘s or hearer‘s desires, but as a label for a

structural phenomenon very close to the linguistic concept of ―markedness” In brief,

preference is not a personal wish but an observed pattern in talk

Preference structure divides second turns into two categories, i.e preferred and

dispreferred social acts The preferred is the structurally expected next act and the

dispreferred one is the structurally unexpected act

According to Comrie (1976a: 114), ―unmarked categories tend to have less

morphological material than marked categories‖ and there is ―greater likelihood of

morphological irregularity in unmarked forms‖ As a matter of fact, the preferred

second turns to different and unrelated adjacency pair first parts have less material

than the dispreferred ones Therefore, in essence, preferred second acts are unmarked

because they occur as structurally simpler turns On the contrary, owing to its various

kinds of structural complexity, dispreferreds are marked

1.3.2 General patterns of preference structure

Levinson (1983: 336) states that ―Given a structural characterization of preferred and

dispreferred turns we can then correlate the content and the sequential position of such

turns with the tendency to produce them in a preferred or dispreferred format‖ And

we can find recurrent and reliable patterns, for example, a disagreement of an

assessment or a proposal are nearly always in a dispreferred format while an

agreement is certainly in a preferred format The following table indicates the sort of

consistent match between the format and the content found across a number of

adjacency pair seconds

Preferred Acceptance Acceptance Agreement Expected answer Denial

Dispreferred Refusal Refusal Disagreement Unexpected

answer/ non-answer

Admission

Also talking about the correlations of content and format in adjacency pair second responses, Yule (1996: 79), however, names this the general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures And he presents these general patterns in a different way as we can see in the table below:

disagree refuse decline disagree refuse

Table 2 - The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures

(following Levinson 1983)

From the table we can see that it comes to considering request or offer as first parts, acceptance is the preferred second act and refusal is the dispreferred one We can have some illustrations below:

Assessment

Offer

Request

Isn‟t that dish delicious?

Want some tea?

Can you help me?

I‟m busy now

1.3.3 Dispreferred second turns

Yule (1996) states that silence in the second part is always a dispreferred response, often leading the first speaker to a revision of the first part in order to get a second part

that is not silence from the other speaker Non-response communicates that the speaker

is not in a position to provide the preferred response, for example:

Sandy: But I'm sure they'll have good food there

(1.6 seconds)

Sandy: Hmm - I guess the food isn't great Jack: Nah - people mostly go for the music

(Yule, 1996: 80) Also, silence is risky as it may give the impression of non-participation in the conversational structure Generally speaking, when participants have to make a dispreferred second turn, they indicate that they are doing something very marked A dispreferred can be marked with an initial hesitation, a delay, a preface, an appeal to the views of others, or a stumbling repetition, and so on

The patterns related to a dispreferred second turns in English are presented as a series

of optional elements by (Yule, 1996: 81) as follows:

k hedge the negative

pause; er; em; ah well; oh

I'm not sure; I don't know that's great; I'd love to I'm sorry; what a pity

I must do X; I'm expected in Y you see; you know

everbody else; out there too much work; no time left really; mostly; sort of; kinda

I guess not; not possible

We can take one dialog to analyze:

Becky: Come over for some coffee later Wally: Oh - eh - I'd love to - but you see - I - I'm supposed to get this

finished - you know

(Yule, 1996: 81)

In this conversation, such linguistic elements as a hesitation ‗oh – eh‘, preface/token

Yes ‗I'd love to‘, stumbling repetition ‗I - I'm‘, account ‗I'm supposed to get this

finished‘ and an invocation of understanding ‗but you see, you know‘ are used to

create dispreferred second turns

Still discussing the linguistic features that signal dispreferred second responses, but Levinson (1983: 334) presents them in a different way as we can see below:

(a) delays: (i) by pause before delivery, (ii) by the use of a preface, (iii)

by displacement over a number of turns via use of repair initiators or

insertion sequences (b) prefaces: (i) the use of markers or announcers of dispreferreds like

Uh and Well, (ii) the production of token agreements before

disagreements, (iii) the use of appreciations if relevant (for offers, invitations, suggestions, advice), (iv) the use of apologies if relevant

(for requests, invitations, etc), (v) the use of qualifiers (e.g I don‟t

know for sure, but…), (vi) hesitation in various forms, including

self-editing (c) accounts: carefully formulated explanations for why the

(dispreferred) act is being done (d) declination component: of a form suited to the nature of the first part

of the pair, but characteristically indirect or mitigated

Looking at the linguistic elements that present dispreferreds, we can conclude that a dispreferred takes more time and more language than a preferred one

1.4 Dispreferreds in Part A - Listening Comprehension of TOEFL PBT

Listening Comprehension Section of TOEFL is divided into three parts, each with a different format and a different direction Since July 1995, its standard form has followed this format:

Table 4 - Listening Comprehension Format in Standard Form

The first part of TOEFL PBT Listening Comprehension Section consists of conversations in which two Ss interact with each other A third S poses a question about what was said or implied in the conversation There are four answer choices for each dialog Test-takers are required to choose the best answer to the question he/she listens to and then mark the choice on their answer sheet

Most of the dialogs in Part A of TOEFL PBT involve a man and a woman each of whom usually speaks one or two sentences The topics of the dialogs in Part A are about facets of life at American universities (taking tests, talking to professors, writing research papers or attending classes) or about more general activities (shopping, looking for houses, taking vacations, etc)

According to Rogers (2000: 23), some of the items tests test-takers‘ ability to understand various language functions (my emphasis) For example, test-takers must

be able to determine if a S is agreeing or disagreeing with the other S, or if one S is accepting or rejecting the other S‘s offer It means that in Part A, there are questions associated with dispreferred second acts Below are five kinds of questions in relation

to the general patterns of dispreferred second turns in Part A - TOEFL PBT Listening

Sample item

You will hear: *

M1: We can still make it to the movie We‟d just miss the first ten minutes

F1: Over by the window, I‟d say There‟s not much point

M2: What does the woman imply?

You will read:

(A) She does not mind if she misses ten minutes of the movie

(B) She thinks they can be there in no time

(C) She does not mind if they go or not

(D) She sees no reason to go if they miss the first ten minutes

First, the questions belong to the pattern assessment-disagreement in which the first S

gives an assessment of something and the second S disagrees with the idea

F1: I thought Cheryl‟s photographs were the best at the exhibit

M1: I didn‟t really see it that way

(Rogers, 2000: 46)

The second kind is invitation-refusal More specific, the first S requests the second S

to come somewhere or to take part in some activities; or invites him/her to do something; and the second S refuses the first S‘s invitations

M1: Would you like to join us on Sunday? We‟re going to go on a picnic

at the lake

F1: I‟d love to, but I have a test Monday, and I have to get ready for it

(Rogers, 2000: 50)

The third question type falls into offer-declination They are situations where the first

S proposes to help the second S or allows him/her to do something but the second one declines the offer For instance:

F1: Should I make reservations for dinner Friday night?

M1: Thanks anyway, but I‟ve already made them

(Rogers, 2000: 51)

Fourth is the question of proposal-disagreement This is the kind of question in which

the first S suggests a solution to something but the second S rejects it

F2: Maybe you could get a ride to campus with Peggy tomorrow

M1: Oh, Peggy no longer drives to class

(Rogers, 1997: 172)