INTRODUCTION
Rationale
English, as an international communication tool, is the most widely used all over the world As a result, it is absolutely vital for many Vietnamese learners to have a good command of English so that they can communicate effectively with foreigners However, many Vietnamese learners even those who are good at reading and writing with sufficient knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary still fail in communicating with foreigners Although they may have little difficulty in understanding the literal meaning of the target language in authentic communication situations, they cannot interpret the utterances correctly, or express themselves appropriately One of the reasons is that they lack necessary pragmatic knowledge; that is, they are not aware of the social, cultural, and discourse conventions that have to be followed in various situations like many other proficient speakers of English (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999) This is understandable because according to Bachman (1990), in order to be successful in communication, it is essential for foreign language learners like Vietnamese students to know not just grammar and text organization but also pragmatic aspects of the target language Once they are not aware of English pragmatic aspects, they may be incapable of using the target language effectively in intercultural communication In other words, low pragmatic awareness results in many communication breakdowns
As a teacher of English at Vietnam University of Commerce, from her own observations and experience, the researcher has noticed that VUC students often get difficulties in communicating in English when involving in different communication situations in classrooms as well as in real-life encounters Many of them do not employ appropriate strategies and do not use relevant linguistic forms to perform a speech act
They engage in communication activities without paying attention to factors that influence the communication such as the relationship with the other interlocutor The situation is worse when they interact with native speakers As they are not exposed much to real-life situations, they often feel stuck They may not understand what native speakers mean or are unable to make appropriate utterances in different situations
Especially, they often violate politeness or cultural norms, thus leading to their difficulty or even failure in intercultural communication This maybe due to the fact that they are not really aware of pragmatic aspects or do not put great emphasis on them
Such a situation has inspired the author to carry out a research paper into
“Students’ pragmatic awareness and implications for English classroom teaching at
Vietnam University of Commerce.” with a focus on VUC 1 st year non-English major students‘ pragmatic awareness Some pedagogical implications are also given to help raise the students‘ pragmatic awareness and increase English teaching effectiveness.
Aims of the study
The purpose of this research is to explore 1 st year non-English major students‘ pragmatic awareness at the university where the researcher is serving Basing on the research results, the researcher then goes further to figure out teaching techniques to raise the students‘ pragmatic awareness It is specifically important because these freshmen should be properly primed for directing their own learning process, setting as a good foothold for the next coming school years and in the long run for their life-long study
When they are aware of pragmatic aspects and put much emphasis on these right from their initial time studying at university, they will have a right orientation in studying English, thus increasing the effectiveness of their English study It is also hoped that the study will be a contribution to improve the teaching quality at this university.
Research questions
The study is aimed at answering two research questions:
1 How much are VUC 1 st year non-English major students aware of English pragmatic aspects?
2 What should be done to improve the students‘ pragmatic awareness?
Scope of the study
The study focuses on investigating pragmatic awareness of VUC 1 st year non- English major students who are not taught pragmatics explicitly That of English major students or 2 nd , 3 rd or 4 th year students, therefore, is left for future research Also, due to the time constraints, this study involves a small number of students Moreover, the participants targeted in the survey questionnaire for native speakers are all American; therefore, only American social and cultural norms are used to form a data basis for analysing and evaluating the appropriateness of the students‘ responses.
Significance of the study
The study is hoped to be valuable to not only VUC teachers and students but Vietnamese education policy makers as well First, the study should be able to help teachers at VUC improve their theoretical understanding of pragmatics and its importance in language learning and teaching From this, they can find more suitable and effective teaching strategies and put more emphasis on teaching pragmatic aspects to help their students highly aware of pragmatics, thus they can use English more fruitfully in their professional and academic life Second, it is hoped that the research will enhance VUC students‘ pragmatic awareness so as to help them become more engaged in classroom activities Third, by presenting a wealth of relevant literature, the study is expected to propose some ideas to help educators and policy makers take steps along the path toward building pragmatically authentic materials and introducing pragmatic-oriented examinations into the curriculum Another significance of the study is to contribute obviously to the knowledge of pragmatic awareness which is still an alien linguistic area in Vietnam On the other hand, it suggests new aspects for further studies.
Design of the study
The study consists of three main parts as follows:
Part A: Introduction: This part presents the rationale, aims, methods, scope, significance and design of the study
Part B: Development: There are four chapters to this part Chapter I: Literature Review: This chapter reviews the literature to provide a basic theoretical background on pragmatic awareness and a justification for conducting the study on the grounds of finding a gap left by previous studies on pragmatic awareness Chapter II: Methodology:
This chapter deals with the overall picture of how the research was carried out from the first step of determining the study structure to the last one of collecting and analyzing data
Chapter III: Data Analysis and Findings: This chapter interprets the answer to the posed research questions: How much are VUC 1 st year non-English major students aware of English pragmatic aspects? What should be done to improve the students‘ pragmatic awareness? The findings end with conclusions and comments Chapter IV: Implications:
This chapter recommends possible improvements for both teachers and students with an aim to raise the students‘ pragmatic awareness
Part C: Conclusion: This part summarises the main contents and findings of the study, limitations of the present study and some suggestions for further studies.
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter serves as the theoretical background for the study The definitions and aspects of pragmatics and pragmatic awareness were given to clarify the subject matters investigated and the significance of the matters
Pragmatics, a subfield of Linguistics, developed in the late 1970s and was initially introduced by Charles Morris in 1938 Morris (1938, p 6-7) introduced this term when he proposed his theory of signs, known as semiotics, consisting of syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics
Since its introduction by Morris up to the present time, pragmatics has been defined in various ways by many scholars (Leech, 1983; Levinson, 1983; Mey, 1993;
Rose & Kasper; 2001; Stalnaker, 1972; and Yule, 2006) Though these scholars define pragmatics differently, they all address their attention to what the speakers or writers mean For this reason, pragmatics can be defined as ―the study of meaning‖ (Griffith,
2006, p 1) or ―the study of the use of context to make inferences about meaning‖ (Fasold
Out of numerous definitions of pragmatics, one of interest in second language pedagogy has been proposed by Crystal (in Kasper, 2001, p 2) as ―the study of language from the point of view of users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction and the effects their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication.‖ In other words, pragmatics is defined as the study of communicative action in its sociocultural context Kasper (2001, p 2) indicates that communicative actions includes not only using speech acts (such as apologizing, complaining, complimenting, and requesting) but also engaging in different types of discourse and participating in speech events of varying length and complexity
Pragmatics offers various areas of study Yule (2006, p.112-119) discusses such different areas as invisible meaning, context, deixis, reference, inference, anaphora, presupposition, speech acts, direct and indirect speech acts, negative and positive face and politeness Scholars like Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) have carried out their studies on speech acts which introduce three acts, a locutionary act, an illocutionary act and a perlocutionary act Following Austin and Searle, Billmeyer (1990), Cohen and Olshtain
(1993), Bouton (1994), and Tateyama (2001) have investigated some specific pragmatic aspects focusing on such speech acts as complimenting, apologising, and requesting and comprehension of implicature
Different from the scholars who focus their studies on speech acts, Grice (1975) has explored why interlocutors can successfully converse with one another in a conversation Brown and Levinson (1978) and Leech (1983) were concerned with politeness
In this study, the researcher follows the division of pragmatics by Leech and Thomas (in Kasper, 2001), who classified pragmatics into two components, namely pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics These two aspects of pragmatics will be discussed along with the employment of speech acts
The speech act theory is attributed to Austin (1962), who claimed ―many utterances, termed performatives, do not only communicate information, but also are equivalent to actions‖ (p 22) In other words, by these utterances, people do things or have others do things for them; they apologize, promise, request, refuse and complain
Utterances that may be used to realize the above functions are known as speech acts
Austin (1962) categorised speech acts into different aspects: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary
(i) locutionary act is the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference Whenever a speaker produces an utterance, they perform a locutionary act
This is simply the act of producing a linguistically well-formed, and thus meaningful, expression
(ii) illocutionary act is the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc in uttering a sentence, by virtue of the conventional force associated with it (or with its explicit performative paraphrase) In other words, the illocutionary act is the function of the utterance that the speaker has in mind, i.e., the communicative purpose that is intended or achieved by the utterance An example is the statement ―It‘s hot in here‖ This sentence can have the illocutionary force of a statement, an offer, an explanation, or a request It might be uttered by someone who is experiencing heat in a crowded room to just comment on the weather It can also be uttered by a person who intends to open the window so that everyone in the room can enjoy fresh air from outside
(iii) perlocutionary act is the bringing about the effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance (that is, the hearer may feel amused, annoyed, as a consequence of the speaker‘s utterance)
Among the three acts, the illocutionary act is regarded as the most important, as it is actually what the speaker wants to achieve through the action of uttering the sentence
Yule (1996) claims that, of these types of speech acts, the most distinctive one is illocutionary force: ―Indeed, the term speech act is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance‖ (p 49)
Searle provided a classification of speech acts according to their functions; he divided them into five categories including ―representatives‖, ―directives‖,
(i) representatives, which commit the speaker to the truth of expressed proposition (paradigm cases: asserting, concluding, etc.)
(ii) directives, which are attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something (paradigm cases: requesting, questioning, etc.)
(iii) commissives, which commit the speaker to some future course of action (paradigm cases: promising, threatening, offering)
(iv) expressives, which express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating)
(v) declaratives, which affect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions (paradigm cases: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment)
1.1.2.2 Pragmalinguistics 1.1.2.2.1 Definitions and aspects of pragmalinguistics
Pragmalinguistics refers to the resources for conveying communicative acts and relational or interpersonal meanings Such resources include pragmatic strategies such as directness and indirectness, routines, and other range of linguistic forms which can soften or intensify communicative acts Pragmalinguistic term can be applied to the study of the more linguistic end of pragmatics where it is possible to consider the particular resources which a given language provides for conveying particular illocution (Leech, 1983, p 11)
In short, pragmalinguistics refers to knowledge of the linguistic means to perform speech acts (Schmitt, 2002, p 80) For example, a request can be made in the following ways:1-
A direct request as in : ―Pass the salt, will you?‖ 2- A conventionally indirect request as in: ―Can you pass the salt please‖ 3- Non- conventionally indirect request as in: ―I like my food quite salty‖ An example is given by Kasper (2001) in which two forms of apology are proposed as in ―Sorry‖ and ―I‘m absolutely devastated—could you possibly find it in your heart to forgive me?‖ Both utterances are expressions of an apology, but definitely are uttered in different contexts Here the speaker uttering the latter apology has chosen some pragmalinguistic resources of apologizing In all, it can be summarised that pragmalinguistics incluses two aspects, namely, conventions of means (strategies for realizing speech intentions) and conventions of forms (the linguistic items used to express speech intentions) (Kasper & Roever, 2005) The former refers to the semantic devices (or semantic formulas) by which a speech act is performed The latter involves the exact wordings used For example, a request can be realized by means of different semantic formulas, from a direct statement expressing obligation to an indirect statement expressing wishes A request can be realized by means of different wordings such as ―You must lend me your car.‖, ―I would like to borrow your car.‖,
―Could you lend me your car?‖, or ―My car has broken down.‖, and so on
METHODOLOGY
The present chapter introduces the context of VUC, where the current research is done and describes the research design, methodological steps and procedures used to carry out this study It describes, in detail, the participants, data collection instruments, procedures, methods of data analysis, etc that were involved in the investigation
The research was carried out at VUC At this university, students of English include English majors and non-English majors This study was only aimed at the latter
Non-English major students are required to complete six semesters of English ranging from level 1 to 6 equivalent to English 1.1 and English 1.6 All these English courses cover business issues so that students can use them fruitfully in their future job Each course is allotted two credits with the structure 24.9.12 It means students will have 24 periods for class meetings, 9 periods for group presentations, and 12 periods for self-study
(50 minutes a period) For the first semester, these students have to take part in a written exam after which they are placed into different classes based on their scores For the second one, they take English 1.1 course, for which the textbook English 1.1 adpated from ―Market leader‖ written by David Cotton, David Falvey and Simon Kent and published in 2004 by Longman has been adopted Its objective is to provide students with basic knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and necessary skills so that they can easily get involved in business communication One of the most important parts in this textbook is the ―Skills‖ section which helps develop students‘ essential business communication skills and make them familiar with some common situations in business such as introducing, suggesting, apologizing, etc ―Skills‖ activities in each unit focusing on a particular theme are used to consolidate students' knowledge of a language point, and to provide controlled and free practice of the target language Each ―Skills‖ section contains a ―Useful language‖ box which provides students with the language they need to carry out the given business tasks Expressions and structures provided in the box are to help enhance students‘ pragmalinguistic knowledge Some speech acts are of the focus of the textbook such as: greeting, requesting, parting, thanking and responding, addressing, etc
In consideration of the research‘s purposes, this study was done in the light of both qualitative and quantitative methods When choosing this approach, the author has good reasons for her choice It is undoubted that questionnaires are beneficial for obtaining quantitative information and thanks to their time and energy efficiency for collecting and analyzing Thus, the use of a quantitative questionnaire is believed to be appropriate to explore the participants‘ pragmatic awareness at the level of noticing the most appropriate response to each question However, the qualitative method of analysis seems to be more suitable to investigate the subjects‘ understanding of pragmatic aspects since it can offer insights into students‘ opinions, thoughts and reasonings – things that may be undetected with quantitative methods For these reasons, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is believed to be suited to this study
2.3 Research design 2.3.1 Sample and sampling
The participants in the study were 5 Americans and 50 first-year non-English major students at VUC 2 male and three female Americans in the survey were living in Vietnam They were from 24 to 35 years old The group of the student subjects for the questionnaire was constituted by 35 female and 15 male freshmen from five faculties at VUC The number of participants was equally distributed among these faculties The participants‘ ages ranged from 18 to 22 years old Most of them had been learning English for at least four years Especially, one student had 13-year experience in learning English Therefore, the students had their mastery of necessary grammatical knowledge to accomplish the survey Notably, none of the participants had lived in an English speaking country prior to taking part in the research To increase the reliability and validity of the research study, a random sampling procedure was applied
A descriptive research design incorporating both qualitative and quantitative instruments was used to accomplish the objectives of the study The use of both types of instruments provides a more comprehensive picture of the participants‘ awareness than could be possible with one instrument alone (Creswell, 2008) Two questionnaires, which had the similar contents, were adopted in this research Among them, one was distributed to five native speakers to elicit their answers, which were considered as a basis to evaluate the appropriateness of VUC students‘ answers The other was translated into Vietnamese and used to assess VUC students‘ pragmatic awareness The questionnaires were designed to consist of three parts Part one aimed at obtaining some background information of the subjects including their age, gender This part in the questionnaire for native speakers elicited the participants‘ nationality In the questionnaire for Vietnamese students, some other information such as how long they had been studying English and their experience in living in an English-speaking country was employed Part two included 16 multiple-choice questions, and to each one a brief situational description with four possible answers (except question 9 with 8 options) was provided For each item the subjects were required to choose the expression which best suited the given context
There was a little difference between this part in the survey for native speakers and that in the survey for VUC students In the former, the native speakers were also asked to give their own utterance to each situation if they found all given utterances inappropriate This helped the researcher in designing the survey questionnaire for students in which for each situation there was only one most appropriate utterance Part three included 11 judgment questions, which required the subjects to judge whether an utterance or an act was proper in a certain context All these items are regarded as closely related to the high-frequency activities in real cross-cultural communication, and bearing distinctive cultural differences Moreover, all items focused on speech acts mentioned in the textbook English 1.1, namely, greeting (items 2, 5, 6), addressing (items 4, 17), introducing (items
18, 27), requesting and responding (items 1, 3, 7, 8, 15, 16, 20, 25), inviting (items 10,
19), parting (items 11, 12, 23, 24), thanking and responding (items 13, 14, 21, 22) and one pragmatic aspect - conversation topics (items 9, 26) Those questions related to one speech act were not grouped together but were deliberately separated with an aim at checking the participants‘s ability to identify the speech acts The speech act of requesting enjoyed the largest number of questions in the survey questionnaire because this kind of speech act often requires learners‘ challenging endeavour to master as it involves many factors such as politeness and cultural norms After each question, the subjects were required to give a short explanation for their choice The objective of the qualitative part is to further explore the participants‘ ability to analyse given language expressions using their pragmatic awareness To increase the validity of the questionnaires, the researcher consulted her supervisor, colleagues and friends, who all had much experience in the areas of EFL teaching and language assessment Suggestions from these consultants led to two main points of revision: 1) the variables of politeness including power, social distance and rank of imposition between the interlocutors of some situations were clarified and emphasized, and 2) some redundancy and unnatural expressions were modified
After the revision, the English version of the questionnaire was administered to the sample of five native speakers of English who were American to find the native speakers‘ norms in selecting the appropriate expressions As there is no concrete standard for what is considered appropriate language, the most valid and practical way to judge the appropriateness of an utterance in a particular context may rely on the native speakers‘ norms in language use Altogether 50 copies of the questionnaire in Vietnamese were distributed to 50 students at VUC at the end of English 1.1 course in June, 2012 Before the questionnaires were distributed to the students, it was made clear to them that the purpose was to test their pragmatic awareness and all the data collected would be used for research only Thus the students could concentrate themselves on the pragmatic aspects of the utterance when making their choices All was explained to the students in Vietnamese, their native language, in order to increase the students‘ comfort and understanding The students were allowed to consult dictionaries as well as the researcher for new words they had in understanding the answer options, which could ensure that there was no linguistic barrier for the subjects However, they were required to do the questionnaire individually
None were allowed to leave before the scheduled time so as to avoid them trying to rush to fill out the questionnaire in order to leave the class early They finished the questionnaire within forty-five minutes The response rate was 100% and all of the questionnaires were valid
The quantitative data were expressed in percentages and presented in the form of tables The quantitative data were used to measure the student participants‘ awareness of each speech act Then only qualitative data given by the participants who had the correct answer to each question were analysed using a content analysis technique to find general patterns or aspects of pragmatic awareness raised by the participants (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002) Then, these aspects were recorded together with the number of participants mentioning each aspect Student answers (in Vietnamese) were translated by the researcher Relevant quotations were then grouped together To avoid inconsistency or potential bias, data were analyzed and categorized by the researcher alone
In short, the chapter has described in details the setting of the study, the research methods, instruments and procedures used in this study Major findings will be presented and discussed in chapter three.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
Research findings from the questionnaire for native speakers show that all of them had the same answer to each question They all chose the most appropriate utterance from those given in each situation Correct answers to the questions are given in Appendix 3
In this part, the result of the research on students‘ pragmatic awareness will be analyzed and discussed, from the following 7 speech acts, namely greeting, addressing, introducing, requesting and responding, inviting, parting, and thanking and responding and one pragmatic aspect - choosing conversation topics The analysis and discussion of them will be shown respectively Aspects of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatic awareness concerning these speech acts were also reported by the students who had the correct response to each question
The average percentage of appropriate responses by speech acts is shown in the table below:
Speech acts Correct answer rate
Table 3.1: Average percentage of appropriate responses by speech acts
It can be seen clearly from table 3.1 that the average percentage of appropriate responses to all speech acts addressed in the questionnaire was relatively low (34.5%)
This indicates that the students‘ awareness of speech acts was below average It is also reflected from table 1 that the speech act of requesting and responding experienced the highest correct answer rate (56.5%) in the questionnaire This result was rather surprising because this kind of speech act is often a big challenge to learners and it is a directive speech act which intrinsically threatens the hearer‘s face and, therefore, it calls for considerable cultural and linguistic expertise on the part of the learners (Brown and Levinson, 1987) The lowest correct answer rate (15%) fell on the speech act of greeting which is a very common one
Greetings which can establish and maintain interpersonal relationships in everyday social interactions, differ greatly in verbal expressions and ways of greeting in different countries Vietnamese ways of greeting are different from typical English-language greetings, which makes it difficult for Vietnamese students to adopt Question 2, 5 and 6 were designed to test the students‘awareness of speech act of greeting
Table 3.2: Students’ awareness of greeting
Greeting is a popular speech act which students at VUC get familiar with right in their first academic year However, according to table 3.2, a small proportion of students (15.3%) had the correct answer For example, in question 2, only 44% of the student subjects chose the correct answer, B When asked to give a brief explanation for their choice, only two students who had the correct answer addressed their pragmalinguistic awareness of conventions of means Examples were translated into English as follows: “I chose B because it is a conventional greeting.”, “This is the way of greeting that I have learnt and I often use.” The rest of the students who had the correct answer to this question showed their sociopragmatic awareness when they indicated the relationship between two interlocutors and the speaking setting: “B is the most appropriate to greet our friend the first time in a day.”
However, nobody identified the difference between ―Hello, how are you?‖ and
―Hello, how are you getting on?‖ American respondents claimed that in America, colleagues, friends or classmates usually use ―Hello, how are you?‖ when they meet for the first time in a day and greeting is quite brief and usually conventional in American culture ―How are you getting on?‖ is inappropriate unless the speaker knows what the hearer is doing at that time It is usually the case that native speakers tend to avoid talking about what is too concrete 36% of the student subjects chose A (Hi, Michael, how are you going?) As for answer D ―What wind brought you here?", which is a typical Vietlish, only 16% of the students chose this answer
As for question 5, the respondents showed their low pragmatic awareness when only one student chose the correct answer, C, ―How are things?‖ This student only mentioned a pragmalinguistic aspect, that is convention of means, when explaining her choice, “We use C because it is a general greeting.” A small majority of the students (54%) chose A ―Hi, John, where are you going?‖ and 36% chose B ―Hi, have you eaten?‖
They claimed that these greetings are suitable in the context because these interlocutors
―meet each other right after dinner‖ These are popular greetings in Vietnamese culture because Vietnamese people prefer to talk about concrete things and they think that the more concrete what they are talking about is, the more care they show for the hearer
However, for most Americans, this kind of greeting sounds impeding and may not be proper According to the surveyed Americans, they do not talk so concrete things because they may feel puzzled or annoyed, since asking such a question means interfering with others‘ business or privacy in their culture
In question 6, Tom unexpectedly met a friend he had not seen for years, he voiced his surprise: ―No!" None of the subjects chose the correct answer A (No) while half of them chose C (Oh) and another half chose D (Hey) The students were not aware of this kind of greeting because in American culture, ―No‖, besides negating something, can act as an exclamation to convey speakers‘ surprise
In communication, it is necessary for people to address each other Addressing plays an important role in cross-cultural communication because addressing shows the speaker's recognition of the hearer as a social being in his specific social status, and suitable addressing helps to establish, maintain and strengthen interpersonal relationship
The inappropriate use of addressing terms will leave an impression of rudeness and stop the communication or breakdown the relationship Questions 4 and 17 in the questionnaire were designed to check students‘ pragmatic awareness of speech act
―addressing‖ The average percentage of students who chose the correct answer was 42%
Table 3.3: Students’ awareness of addressing
In both Vietnam and England/ America, a person‘s name usually consists of a given name/ first name and a surname/ last name However, the order of these two kinds of names is quite different In English, the given name comes first and is followed by the surname, but in Vietnamese, the order is reversed, as can be seen from the following examples:
Nguyen Van Duc Elizabeth Mandel (Surname) (Given name) (Given name) (Surname)
In Vietnamese culture, the right address is Mr Duc (given name) while in western way, Ms Mandel (surname) rather than Ms Elizabeth is right In America, there are some differences in addressing a woman with ―Miss‖, ―Mrs‖ or ―Ms‖ Normally, ―Ms‖ is preferred because the marital status of that woman is not mentioned, thus increasing the formality and politeness of the addressing In business situations, it is better to use formal titles unless the people you meet tell you otherwise
However, in question 4, only 24% of the students chose the correct answer, C (Glad to meet you, Ms Mandel) Sociopragmatic aspect concerning politeness was reported by 6 of these students According to them, “C is appropriate because it is deferential to the woman.”, “I chose C because it is a formal situation” or “C is the most polite to speak to a woman for the first time.” None of the students identified the difference between the use of first name and surname in English
IMPLICATIONS
Since the students‘ low pragmatic awareness resulted from their lack of pragmatic knowledge and cultural information associated with the target language, this chapter presents some suggestions for VUC English teachers and students in the areas of teaching and learning pragmatics and cultures
According to Mc Lean (2004), in order to give language learners ―a fighting chance‖ outside the classroom, teachers must provide them with consciousness- raising opportunities to make them consciously aware of forms, meaning, and contextual factors
By attending to pragmatic factors in foreign language situations, students will be able to make informed choices in negotiating effective communication
First, teachers should provide their students with necessary language structures and expressions to convey a speech act Students should enlarge their repertoire of these structures, which makes it easier for them to recognise speech acts in general For example, students should get to know some structures and expressions commonly used in making a suggestion: Why don‘t we ?; What/ How about + noun/ noun phrase/ V- ing?; I suggest/ recommend + V-ing/ (that) somebody (should) +V-infinitive
In other words, teachers should integrate the teaching of grammar with that of pragmatics so that students can have thorough understanding of speech acts
Second, teachers should remind students that a speech act (function) can be expressed in many forms and one form can convey many functions For example, there are many ways to perform the speech act of requesting when one wants to borrow someone‘s car: I have to be at the airport in half an hour./ My car has broken down./ Will you be using your car tonight?/ Could you lend me your car?/ Lend me your car./ I would like to borrow your car./ Would you lend me your car?/ How about lending me your car?, etc In addition, a certain language form can also achieve different communicating purposes For example, ―It’s raining‖ can have different meanings in different contexts: 1
Stating the fact (show the weather of that day objectively); 2 Showing one‘s wish (we‘d better not go out); 3 Requesting (close the doors and windows please); 4 Showing one‘s complaint (the weather here is boring)
It is also advisable for teachers to differentiate direct and indirect speech acts so that students can be aware of illocutionary force of an utterance, thus do not fail to grasp the speaker‘s intention
Sample activities are provided in Appendix 4
4.2 Raising students’ awareness of politeness
Students should be taught how to perform different speech acts in English in different situations of social status, social distance, and ranking of imposition between interlocutors Teachers should design different contextualized activities to get students engaged in The aforementioned variables of politeness should be covered in these activities Some suggested activities are given in Appendix 4
4.3 Raising students’ awareness of cultural norms 4.3.1 Integrating culture into language teaching
Linguists have realized the importance of teaching cultures Stern (1992) points out, ―It is nowadays a common place in language pedagogy to stress the importance of culture teaching and to say that language and culture are interweaved, that it is not possible to teach a language without culture, and that culture is the necessary context for language use.‖ Language and culture are closely related to each other The former expresses and transmits the latter and the latter includes and enriches the former Judging from the close relationship, Valdes (1986) concludes, ―There is no way to avoid teaching culture when teaching a language‖ So for successful communication, shared knowledge of the target culture is essential Awareness of the various perspectives of the target culture on a deep level can certainly lessen misinterpretations and avoid communication conflict In order to fulfill this goal, teachers should take the following measures:
4.3.1.1 Enforcing the teaching of British and American cultural background
There are great differences between eastern and western cultures Therefore, students‘ awareness of cultures is the guarantee of correct understanding and proper use of English, and teachers should try their best to let students know the eastern and western cultures regarding greeting, introducing, thanking and responding, inviting, etc For example, when teaching the speech act of greeting, teachers should introduce cultural aspects related to this speech act and point out cultural differences between Vietnamese and the target language such as: how to greet a person for the first time, how to greet a friend, ways of greetings, etc
4.3.1.2 Creating culture-rich learning environment
Learners in a foreign language setting lack opportunities to engage in communicative situations in which they need to use the target language Moreover, the chances they have to directly observe native speakers‘ interactions are also very scare or even non-existent in this particular setting, so they do not have access to appropriate models to imitate According to Bardovi-Harlig (1998), the longer the learner interacts with native speakers or is immersed in a community of speakers of the foreign language, the more pragmatically aware the learner becomes As VUC students do not engage much in interactions in English, their pragmatic awareness cannot be guaranteed and thus leads to their dificulty or even failure in communication
Though it is almost impossible to provide students with an authentic learning environment where they can have direct communication with native English speakers, it does not mean that teachers cannot try to create a culture-rich environment for them In addition to introducing linguistic and cultural knowledge to learners, teachers should exert more effort to help their students to apply what they have learnt in practice
Teachers can create real situations for students to participate in For instance, the teacher first lets the students read a passage named ―Dining Customs‖, and then asks the students to act as waiters and customers at a restaurant in the US Students are required to talk with each other independently This provides a great opportunity for them to think and speak in accordance with foreign social conventions and at the same time they have to understand what other people say so as to make the conversation continue smoothly and properly
This role-play activity increases students‘ awareness of the appropriate application of cultural information learnt in class and prepares them for real communication with native English speakers Besides, in order to make sure that students fulfill the activities successfully, teachers should convey enough information about the foreign culture to students beforehand
The syllabus is used as the guide of the whole process of English teaching In order to integrate cultural teaching with English teaching, specific requirements about the contents and methods of cultural teaching should be added to the syllabus In Vietnam‘s examination-oriented education system, the English teaching syllabus is actually designed to develop the students‘ ability to fulfill all kinds of tests and examinations in which culture aspects are ignored Consequently, considering the guiding position a syllabus holds in English teaching, adding culture into it can better guarantee this integrating process
4.3.3 Providing more authentic teaching materials
Making students aware of the use of the target language naturally implies that the target language they come into contact with should be real and authentic In view of foreign language teaching, ―authentic language‖ means that it is actually used in real communicative situations, as opposed to language that is artificially made up for purposes other than communication It is beyond doubt that students can learn to use English well only when they are exposed to authentic learning materials, especially when learning English in Vietnam, where they do not have many opportunities to have direct communication with English native speakers and they cannot learn the target language by means of communicating with foreigners So it is teachers‘ task to provide plausible language materials to students so that they can have more opportunities to come into contact with real target language In a certain sense, authentic materials give students a taste of ―real‖ language in use, and provide them with valid linguistic data for their natural acquisition process to work on Once they get people into contact with plenty of authentic materials, they can imitate the manners of native use the language in the way of native speakers, and gradually, their sense of appropriateness will be formed thus pragmatic awareness will be developed