Teachers’ politeness request making a case study at a high school in quang ninh province

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES TRAN THI MAI HUONG TEACHERS’ POLITENESS REQUEST MAKING: A CASE STUDY AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN QUANG NINH PROVINCE MASTER'S THESIS OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATION THAI NGUYEN - 2022 THAI NGUYNE UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES TRAN THI MAI HUONG TEACHERS’ POLITENESS REQUEST MAKING: A CASE STUDY AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN QUANG NINH PROVINCE (Nghiên cứu về chiến lược lịch sự trong lời yêu cầu của giáo viên tại một trường THPT ở Quảng Ninh) English language teaching methodology Code: 8.14.01.11 MASTER'S THESIS OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATION Dr NGUYEN TRONG DU THAI NGUYEN - 2022 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis entitled “Teachers’ politeness request making: a case study at a high school in Quang Ninh province” is written by myself and describes my own work unless otherwise acknowledged in the text I confirm that this work is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master at the University of Education, Thai Nguyen University This work has not been and will not be submitted for any other degree at any other higher education institution Thai Nguyen, June 2022 Submitted by, Tran Thi Mai Huong i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In completing this thesis, I owe my sincere thanks to many people First, I would like to express my special thanks to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Trong Du, for his patience, invaluable guidance, suggestions, constructive comments, and support Without him, I would not have been able to fulfill my job of conducting the study and writing the thesis I would also like to thank all the teachers at the Department of Post graduate studies – University of Education - Thai Nguyen University who have helped me a lot during my MA candidature My special thanks also go to the knowledgeable lecturers of my MA course; their lectures have given me a lot of invaluable knowledge and skills in doing research I would also like to thank all the 6 teachers who were willing to lend me the videos of their lessons They have contributed a lot to my study Last but not least, I would like to thank all my family members for their warm encouragement and support ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Rationale 1 1.2 Aim of the study 4 1.3 Scope of the study .4 1.4 Research questions 4 1.5 Significance of the study .4 1.6 Structure of the thesis 5 1.7 Chapter Summary 6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7 2.1 Speech acts 7 2.1.1 Speech act theory 7 2.1.2 Classification of speech acts 9 2.1.3 The speech act of requesting .10 2.2 Politeness 15 2.2.1 Politeness theory 15 2.2.2 Politeness strategies 17 2.2.3 Politeness and indirectness in requests .25 2.4 Previous studies on requesting 30 2.5 Chapter summary 32 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 33 3.1 Research design 33 3.2 Participants 33 3.3 Data collection instruments .33 3.3.1 Observation of video recordings 33 3.3.2 Focus group interview .34 3.4 Data analysis 36 3.4.1 Analysis of video recordings .36 3.4.2 Focus – group interview 36 iii 3.5 Chapter summary 37 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 38 4.1 Findings from observation data 38 4.1.1 High frequency of direct requests .38 4.1.2 Conventional indirectness 43 4.1.3 Non-conventional indirectness 45 4.2 Findings from interviews 45 4.2.1 Teachers‟ understanding of „requests‟ 46 4.2.2 Teachers‟ knowledge about politeness strategies .47 4.2.3 Pedagogical purpose of making requests in the classroom .47 4.3 Discussion 51 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS 53 5.1 Recapitulation 53 5.2 Implications .56 5.3 Limitations of the study 57 5.4 Suggestions for further studies 57 5.5 Chapter summary 58 REFERENCES 59 APPENDIX iv ABSTRACT This thesis presents the results of a study on how high school teachers make requests in a polite manner As such, the study aims at finding out the politeness strategies that the high school teachers often use to make requests in their classroom setting In order to do so, a qualitative method was used with a supplement of some numbers and percentages In other words, qualitative approach has a major role and quantitative has a minor one Observation was conducted with 6 videos by 6 teachers, and focus group was carried out later to generate further data The videos watched carefully several times and examples of requests by the teachers were jotted down and classified based on the Blum-Kulka et al (1989) classification of requests The focus group interview data was transcribed and described in terms of each theme set out in advance The results show that high school teachers mostly use direct strategies to make their requests rather than indirect ones No teachers make any non- conventionally indirect strategies such as strong hints and mild hints The teachers argued that using direct requests is pedagogically appropriate since in classroom setting, requests need to be short, concise and easy to understand The thesis suggests that teachers should use more indirect strategies so that the lessons will become more interesting and attraction Key words: politeness strategy, requests, qualitative method, observation, focus- group interview, teachers iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale The fundamental goal of teaching a foreign language is to help learners be able to communicate in that language For a successful communication, apart from the language competence, learners must also have socio-cultural knowledge and ability It is because in many situations, having good knowledge of grammar rules and wide vocabulary does not guarantee comprehension Rather, language users must know how and when to use an utterance appropriately so that it does not threaten the hearer‟s face which can lead to communication breakdown In other words, the understanding of grammar rules and word meaning does not constitute the understanding of the message (Kaplan, 1989) In Vietnamese context, communicative language teaching has been applied in almost all high schools in last 10 years or so The establishment of the National Foreign Language Project (NFLP), which is realized by Decision 1400 in 2008 by the Prime Minister, has set new insights into teaching and learning practices at all levels which include high schools In recent years, there have been remarkable changes in the course of teaching and learning English in Vietnam, especially when the communicative approach became a hot topic among people in the fields of language education As a result, the English curriculum has been geared more toward communication, and communicative competence is also paid more intention However, the development of linguistic competence still sees a minor role in teaching and learning English Consequently, Vietnamese learners are likely to have difficulty communicating with English native speakers and other leaners of English as well During the last fifteen years teaching English for upper secondary students, my colleagues and I have witnessed a rather disturbing phenomenon in which those students were often reluctant to raise their voice in English in the classroom In retrospect, I found myself in the same situation as my students Were it not for the 1 teacher‟s encouragement or acknowledgement of my ideas, I would not have had the willingness to raise my voice in class “Teacher‟s encouragements would probably be the solution for my students”, I thought I then took into consideration this experience when planning the lessons I spent much time thinking about the language I would use in class, so that through my saying, I could encourage and motivate my students to speak more Still, I felt quite puzzled Much as I planned the language used beforehand, I failed to stir up the class atmosphere sometimes Why the students show little interest in learning English in class? Is there anything a teacher can do, besides giving encouragements, to stimulate the student‟s interest? It comes to my realization that in a specific language learning environment, classroom activities hosted (not controlled, but guided) by teacher helps shape a special interpersonal relationship This is similar to any other social relationship To promote the effective communication as well as to develop good relationship or togetherness, being polite could be seen as the one of the core elements in social interactions The teachers, hence, probably should take into consideration “how to speak” and “what to speak” so that they could sound more polite in the classroom For instance, utterances such as please, would you and thank you are regarded as polite in teacher-students interaction Being aware of how politeness strategies are employed in the teacher‟s utterances, accordingly, is also of significance As it can be seen clearly, politeness plays a great importance role in human daily communication It has a great influence in phenomena, rules and structures of languages Therefore, the effectiveness of communication is affected considerably During the development of civilized society, human beings have been founding standards and values describing appropriate behaviors as well as communicative strategies and language structures which are considered being polite in specific situations and specific cultures There are a number of studies on politeness issue because of its significance in communication However, each researcher has a different point of view For example, Lakoff (1973) and Leech (1983) study politeness under communicative strategies, Brown and Levinson (1987) consider politeness as behaviors of saving face Although politeness seems to be quite familiar 2 and very old, in fact it still develops nonstop and actually offers me many interests, which inspires me to carry out research on such issue However, to achieve politeness in communication, it is necessary to give out suitable politeness strategies for each certain context Thus, the study on politeness as well as politeness strategies is of great importance and essential to enhance the effectiveness of our daily communication Since politeness is an essential part of all forms of communication, Mey (1993), Levinson (1983), and Chomsky (1980) argue that communicative competence includes not only knowledge of the linguistic forms of a language but also knowledge of when, how and to whom it is appropriate to use these forms In this line, communicative competence seems to cover or include pragmatic competence, the former is “the knowledge of form and meaning”, and the latter is defined as “the knowledge of conditions and manner of appropriate use, in conformity with various purposes.” (Chomsky, 1980) Reviewing the literature, I have found out that little research has been done on the politeness strategies in making requests by high school teachers Most studies on requests are carried out with learners of English rather than with teachers Also, little research has been done with politeness in requests Therefore, to gain a better understanding of this issue, the writer decided to conduct a study entitled “Teachers’ politeness request making: a case study at a high school in Quang Ninh province" to investigate and highlight the use of politeness strategies by English teachers in the classroom and by high school students in particular There are some reasons for the choice of the speech act of request for investigation in this study Firstly, linguists have admitted that requests are socially complex even for native speakers Secondly, there is little research on this speech act in Vietnamese background although there have been a big number of studies in other languages such as Japanese (Tanaka, 1988; Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Kubota, 1996; Nike & Tajika, 1994), Chinese (Banerjee & Carrell, 1988; Song-Mei, 1993; Huang, 1996), German (Kasper, 1981; Kasper, 1984), Danish (Faerch & Kasper, 1989), and French (Ervin-Tripp et al 1987; Beal, 1990, 1994) Investigation 3