Teaching speech act performance giving and responding to compliments master of arts 5 07 02

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES _ TEACHING SPEECH ACT PERFORMANCE: GIVING AND RESPONDING TO COMPLIMENTS A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL) Submitted by BÙI THỊ MINH NGUYỆT Supervisor: NGUYỄN HOÀNG TUẤN, Ph.D Ho Chi Minh City, December 2008 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION This thesis aims to investigate the situation of teaching and learning speech act performance: giving and responding to compliments in American English among the second-year students at the Department of Foreign Languages at Quy Nhon University More specifically, it will provide linguistic and sociocultural descriptions of the speech act, introduce instructions drawn from several pragmatic studies on the issue to teach that speech act whose effects are compared with the ones based on the textbook It last recommends some possible solutions to improving the teaching of speech act performance: giving and responding to compliments This first chapter provides the background, the rationale, the aims and the overview of the study 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY That the world has become global has made people around the world come to be nearer and nearer in almost every aspect of life One of the most important features that helps them understand each other in order to communicate effectively in that small world is English That is the reason why Vietnamese people have rushed to learn it, and it has been considered as a compulsory subject in the high school graduation examination Moreover, the full recognition of language as a social product has inspired a rapid growth of study of language in context The teaching materials as well as the teaching approaches have been increasingly improved in recent years Quy Nhon University, one of the universities in central Vietnam, has a tradition of over twenty years in teaching English The students graduating from this university are good at written work; however, there are many students who can write English well but cannot communicate fluently They often still feel embarrassed and passive when meeting and speaking with foreigners Perhaps, it is because of the social environment where there are not many foreign visitors speaking English in Quy Nhon and partly the way of teaching and learning the speaking subject In view of the English curriculum, full-time students at the Department of Foreign Languages at Quy Nhon University are to be trained in speaking subject during their first seven semesters of their four-year college program, occupying a large amount of time in their learning course since speaking is believed to be the key figure in learning and using English With respect to materials, in the first-year speaking classes, the book New Interchange 1, by Jack C R (1998), is chosen as the material for the first term and Interchange 2, by Jack C R (1998), is used as the compulsory speaking material for the second term In the first term, students are required to know how to introduce, greet; say names and titles; countries and nationalities (Unit 1), describe work and school; talk about daily schedules (Unit 2), and talk about prices and preferences; give opinions; make comparisons; buy and sell things (Unit 3) They are also assigned to learn to talk about likes and dislikes; give opinions; make invitations and excuses (Unit 4), talk about and describe families and family members; exchange information about the present (Unit 5), together with describing routines and exercise (Unit 6) Moreover, talking about past events and vacations; giving opinions about past experiences (Unit 7) and asking about as well as describing locations of places and neighborhoods; asking about quantities (Unit 8) are compulsory to teach to them Last, they must study to ask about and describe people’s appearance; identify people (Unit 9), describe past experiences; make plans; exchange information about past experiences and events (Unit 10) In the second term, they are to learn to ask about and describe cities; ask for and give suggestions; talk about travel and tourism (Unit 11) and talk about health problems; ask for and give advice; make requests (Unit 12) Especially, expressing likes and dislikes; agreeing and disagreeing; ordering a meal in Unit 13 as well as describing countries; making comparisons; expressing opinions; talking about distance and measurements in Unit 14 are also introduced to the students Then they continue to study to talk about plans; make invitations; accept and refuse invitations; give reasons; take and leave messages (Unit 15) together with exchanging personal information; describing changes; talking about plans for the futures (Unit 16) After finishing book 1, the students immediately move to book by learning how to introduce and talk about themselves; exchange personal information; ask about someone’s childhood in Unit Talking about transportation and transportation problems; evaluating city services; asking for and giving information in Unit accompanied by describing negative and positive features; making comparisons; talking about lifestyle changes; expressing wishes in Unit are provided to the students The last are talking about food; expressing likes and dislikes; describing a favorite snack and giving instructions in Unit As for speaking-training materials for the second-year students, the book Say It Naturally – Verbal Strategies for Authentic Communication, by Wall, A P (1989) is used as the main textbook It is composed of 14 lessons organized in a task-based approach: using the telephone, greeting people and responding, making and responding to introductions, saying goodbye, asking for information, giving directions and instructions, thanking people and responding to thanks, making, accepting, and declining invitations, making requests, apologizing and responding, making excuses, complimenting and responding, complaining, expressing opinions, agreeing, and disagreeing, requesting and offering assistance, attracting attention and warning, expressing and receiving sympathy, hiding feelings At this university, speech acts in the speaking subject are often taught to the second-year students with the information in the textbook and in the following way: expressions or dialogues in the textbook are presented as models; the students learn them, imitate and then practice in suggested situations Rarely are politeness, directness and indirectness introduced or explained carefully in the lesson That is the reason why so many students as well as graduates have problems in communicating in English in reality They are not sure whether they speak politely and appropriately or not in real contexts as Wolfson N (1981:219) states: Unaware of the rules and patterns that condition the behavior of native speakers, the learner does not know how to interpret or respond to the often subtle conversational openings which could lead to increased interaction and even friendships with members of the society Inappropriate or inadequate responses may well result in negative assessments and reactions on the part of native speakers Even more damaging to learners is that lack of critical sociolinguistic information frequently makes it impossible for them to develop relationships with native speakers Moreover, many studies on speech acts concerning cross-cultural communication have been carried out, yet the application of them are not really considered in any ways in Vietnam In this thesis, only the speech act of giving and responding to compliments is emphasized since the study time is limited, and especially complimenting is a powerful, relationship building tool There are many hidden benefits to giving compliments and responding to them It is amazing that such a small, simple skill can change the way you view yourself and the world around you 1.2 THE RATIONALE OF THE STUDY Use of language is so closely and uniquely tied to the culture, and often rules of speaking vary across languages According to these implicit culture rules, we constantly alter our language use depending on the situation and the interlocutor For example, not only are compliments and compliment responses linguistically different, but when and where compliments are used, who gives compliments, who receives them, and what is complimented on vary across cultures If they use the culture norms in their native culture when using the second language or foreign language, they may cause misunderstanding or be seen as rude If a Vietnamese student responds to his American professor who compliments him on his task performance by saying “Oh, no, I’m not good at all …” as the way he would respond in his native language, the American professor may feel that the student is doubting his judgment With such complexity, sociocultural or pragmatic use of language is a challenging area for language learners Without varying language use according to the situation, a second language speaker could totally fail to communicate their attentions, even with a good grasp of grammar and lexical items Although faulty grammar or mispronunciation is usually tolerated, pragmatic failure is unlikely to be excused Wrong use of language results in a negative interpretation of the second language speaker as arrogant, impatient, unfriendly, distant, and so forth, and it often leads to ethnic stereotypes At the same time pragmatics, or language use in its context, is one of the most complex and thus challenging areas for instructors to teach in a language classroom Is pragmatics teachable in the classroom, and is it learnable for the students? A growing number of interventional studies in inter-language pragmatics have investigated the effects of formal instruction on pragmatics Rose and Kasper (2001) discuss overall advantages of instructed group over uninstructed group among past interventional studies, and the effectiveness of formal instruction on pragmatics seems to have been established Some of the teaching techniques involve: conscious learning and noticing (Schmidt, 1993), awareness-raising and observational tasks (Hinkel, 1994; Kasper, 1997) Some studies compare effectiveness of instructional techniques, such as implicit and explicit approaches Although learners improved in pragmatic ability with either approach, the explicit instruction generally appeared to be more effective than the implicit approach (Kasper, 1997) Rose and Kwai-fun (2001) examine the effects of inductive and deductive instruction on learners’ performance in compliments and compliment responses The findings indicated an improvement in the utilization of compliment formulas by learners instructed with both approaches, while only the deductive group approximated native norms in the use of response strategies They conclude that inductive and deductive instruction might both assist in pragmalinguistic improvement, although only the deductive approach may lead to sociopragmatic development Although pragmatic rules of language can be taught in the classroom, they are difficult to articulate or generalize even for teachers As language teachers often notice and some literature suggests (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig, Harford, MahanTaylor, &Reynolds, 1991; Boxer & Pickering, 1995), few ESL/ EFL textbooks reflect natural use of the language However, at Quy Nhon University textbooks are used as the main materials for the students to learn about speech acts, and we wonder if they reflect full of natural use of the language or not As Kasper (1997) argues, since native speakers’ intuition is sometimes an unreliable source of information about pragmatic use of language, teaching materials on pragmatics must be research-based Published teaching materials have generally been written based on material developers’ intuition and thus known to inaccurately represent the way the language is actually used (Bardovi-Harlig, Hardford, Mahan-Taylor, Morgan, & Reynolds, 1991; Boxer & Pickering, 1995) Therefore, with the purpose of checking whether the instructions drawn from the pragmatic studies influenced the students’ awareness of the target culture in giving and responding to compliments more than the ones based on the textbooks, this paper has come into existence 1.3 THE AIMS OF THE STUDY This study aims (1) to provide the literature review concerning speech act performance: giving and responding to compliments in American English mainly based on the empirical data, (2) to design instructions based on the theory given to teach that speech act to the second-year students at the Department of Foreign Languages of Quy Nhon University, (3) to find out the differential effects of instructions based on the textbooks and the ones drawn from the pragmatic studies mainly based on Manes and Wolfson (1981)’ formulas (the American distributions) to the teaching of compliments and compliment responses in a foreign language context, and (4) to discuss about the results and draw some conclusions as well as recommendations In meeting these aims the study will have the consequences of: helping students to have a deep understanding of speech act performance: giving and responding to compliments in American English; and encouraging the students to practice that speech act naturally and effectively in real contexts 1.3 OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS The thesis includes five chapters Chapter one is the introduction of the thesis which consists of the background for the study, the rationale of the study, the aims of the study and the overview of the thesis Chapter two focuses on literature review relevant to speech act performance: giving and responding to compliments Chapter three describes the methodology employed in the study: a presentation of the research question, the research design, the description of characteristics of the subjects, the study instruments, the instructions and the data collection procedures Chapter four analyzes and discusses the findings of the data collected Chapter five draws the conclusions and recommendations for improving the teaching and learning of speech act performance: giving and responding to compliments to the second-year students at the Department of Foreign Languages of Quy Nhon University CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background of the research It is divided into four main sections Section 2.1 discusses the key notions of speech act theory and “compliments and compliment responses” in the speech act theory Section 2.2 summarizes the strategies to giving and responding to compliments based on the previous empirical studies Section 2.3 explores the concept of pragmatic transfer to clarify the relationship of language and culture, which helps the teacher have a better way of teaching the speech act 2.1 Theory of Speech Act 2.1.1 Notion and classification of Speech Act In order to accomplish some purpose in communication, people not just talk, but they are assumed to perform some actions with talk John Austin (1962), a British philosopher, was the first to mention many functions performed by utterances as part of interpersonal communication, and then his theory was discussed and developed by a number of pragmaticists, especially John Searle (1976) They share the view that there is a close link between speech acts and language functions, and that in saying something that has a certain sense and reference, the speaker normally also does something such as making a promise, a request, or an apology (Austin, 1962 & Geis, 1995:3) For example, the utterance “I promise I’ll be there” not only conveys information but itself constitutes the act of promising Austin (1962) believes that a single speech usually contains three separate but related kinds of act: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act According to Austin (1962) and Searle (1976), clarified by Richard et al (1992: 217), the locutionary act is the saying of something, which is meaningful Your mother: You: _ Your mother: You: _ ……………………………… You’re representing your plan to your manager He compliments you on it Your manager: _ You: Your manager: _ You: …………………………………………………… An acquaintance from the university has had a poem published in a magazine You really like the poem You: _ The acquaintance: You: _ The acquaintance: CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “TEACHING SPEECH ACT PERFORMANCE: GIVING AND RESPONDING TO COMPLIMENTS” is my own work This thesis has not previously been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institutions Ho Chi Minh City, December 2008 Bùi Thị Minh Nguyệt RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, Bùi Thị Minh Nguyệt, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses Ho Chi Minh City, December 2008 Bùi Nguyệt Thị Minh ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr Nguyen Hoang Tuan, my supervisor, for his enthusiasm, valuable guidance, insightful comments, and kind support, without which my thesis would have never seen the light of the day My special thanks go to all my lecturers at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (National University of HCM City) for their enthusiasm and valuable scholarly knowledge and experience during my three years’ time attending the Postgraduate Course I am grateful to Mr Jason F and Ms Jill A F., two American teachers of the English Language Institute and Ms Nguyen Thi Bach Tuyet for their enthusiastic help with the teaching to the students by my instructions and collecting the questionnaires from the participants I would like to show my sincere thanks to Mr Nguyen Quang Ngoan, Mr Le Nhan Thanh and my colleagues as well as my close friends, whose kindness and support to my study were great Last but not least, I feel deeply indebted to my family for standing by me during my doing the thesis Bùi Nguyệt Thị Minh ABSTRACT This thesis was conducted to investigate how the speech act of giving and responding to compliments was taught at Quy Nhon University and how the second-year learners majoring in English at Quy Nhon University employed strategies in giving and responding to compliments with instruction in two types: instruction based on the results of the empirical studies on the speech act and instructions in the textbook Say It Naturally – Verbal Strategies for Authentic Communication, by Wall, A P (1989) In order to achieve this aim, literature on the concepts of notion and classification of speech act, American compliments and compliment responses with the formulas, embedded formulas and framing remarks, lexical aspect, power, distance and rate of imposing, addressing forms, topics as well as gender difference in American compliments and compliment responses has been briefly reviewed Furthermore, pragmatic transfer with its definition and types together with pragmatic and communicative competence has also been discussed In addition, to carry out this thesis, the author designed instruction based on the empirical studies to teach students in classes 2006A, 2006B and 2006C (group A) and the instructions in the textbook were provided to students in classes 2006D, 2006E and 2006G (group B) The teachings were fulfilled by Mr Jason F., an American teacher of the English Language Institute and Ms Nguyen Thi Bach Tuyet who are both working for the Foreign Language Department of Quy Nhon University at the end of May, 2008 The questionnaires were delivered and collected twice, prior to the teaching two weeks and after the teaching two weeks The students answered the questionnaires in class with the observation of the teacher who was in charge of teaching the lesson Data obtained from the subjects’ responses were analyzed with the assistance of the SPSS software and by hand The findings revealed that in terms of self-assessment questionnaire, the instructions affected the students’ confidence in producing compliments and compliment responses, and the instructions based on the empirically pragmatic studies had more positive effect than the ones in the textbook With respect to responses to metapragmatic assessment questionnaire, the results in group A and group B were quite different After the instructions, nearly all of the students in group A considered nine strategies in each situation in a rank-order that was similar to Manes and Wolfson (1981)’s (the American distribution) Meanwhile, the students in group B used each strategy in a scattered way, and Vietnamese culture much affected their learning of the speech act compliments and compliment responses; in other words, the instructions in the textbook did not influence on the learners in group B in giving and responding to compliments in this kind of questionnaire As far as the discourse completion questionnaire is concerned, the marked increase in the use of Manes and Wolfson’s nine compliment formulas denoted that both types of instruction had a nearly similarly positive effect However, in responses to responding to compliments, although the instructions designed by the empirically pragmatic studies and the ones in the textbook both led to gains in pragmalinguistic proficiency, only the first was effective for developing sociopragmatic proficiency Some implications to teach the speech act were therefore suggested hopefully for better teaching the speech act of giving and responding to compliments TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Certificate of originality .i Retention and use of the thesis ii Acknowledgements .iii Abstract iv Table of contents .vi List of tables, figures and charts ix List of appendices xii Abbreviations and conventions xiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study 1.2 The rationale of the study .4 1.3 The aims of the study 1.4 Overview of the thesis CHAPTER 2: LITERRATURE REVIEW Introduction .8 2.1 Theory of Speech Act 2.1.1 Notion and classification of Speech Act 2.1.2 Speech Acts across Cultures 12 2.1.3 The Speech Act of Giving and Responding to Compliments 13 2.2 Compliments and Compliment Responses 14 2.2.1 Compliments in American English 14 2.2.1.1 Structures in American Compliments 14 2.2.1.2 Embedded Formulas and Framing Remarks 16 2.2.1.3 Lexical Aspect in American Compliments .17 2.2.1.4 Power, Distance and Rate of Imposing in American Compliments 18 2.2.1.5 Addressing forms in American Compliment 19 2.2.1.6 Topics of American Compliments .20 2.2.1.7 Gender difference in Compliments 20 2.2.2 Compliment Responses in American English 21 2.2.2.1 Strategies in American Compliment Responses 21 2.2.2.2 Addressing forms in American Compliment Responses 23 2.2.2.3 Gender difference in Compliment Responses 24 2.3 Pragmatic transfer 24 2.3.1 Definition 24 2.3.2 Language and Culture: types of pragmatic transfer 24 Summary 26 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY Introduction 27 3.1 Research Questions .27 3.2 Research Design 28 3.2.1 Subjects .28 3.2.2 Instruments: Questionnaires .31 3.2.3 Instructions 36 3.2.3.1 Instructions by empirical studies 36 3.2.3.2 Instructions by the textbook 36 3.2.3 Data collection procedures .40 Summary 41 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS Introduction 42 4.1 Responses to Self- Assessment Questionnaire .42 4.2 Responses to Metapragmatic Assessment Questionnaire 43 4.2.1 Compliments 43 4.2.2 Compliment Responses 46 4.3 Responses to Discourse Completion Questionnaire 49 4.3.1 Compliments 52 4.3.1.1 Topic “ACT” .54 4.3.1.2 Topic “APPEARRANCE” 57 4.3.1.3 Topic “POSSESSION” .57 4.3.1.4 Topic “CHARACTER-ABILITY” 59 4.3.2 Compliment Responses .62 4.3.2.1 Topic “ACT” 65 4.3.2.2 Topic “APPEARRANCE” 65 4.3.2.3 Topic “POSSESSION” 71 4.3.2.4 Topic “CHARACTER-ABILITY” .74 Summary 76 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.1 Review of the findings 77 5.2 Recommendations 80 5.2 Suggestions for further study 81 Bibliography .83 Appendices .89 LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND CHARTS Page Chapter Literature review Table 2.1 The five general functions of speech acts 10 Table 2.2 The relation between “the words” and “the world” 11 Figure 2.1 The pragmatic continuum: language – culture 25 Chapter Methodology Table 3.1 Gender distribution of the respondents 29 Table 3.2 Age distribution of the respondents 29 Table 3.3 Distribution of the respondents’ high school places 30 Table 3.4 Age distribution when starting learning English 30 Table 3.5 Questionnaire scenario attributes 32 Chapter Data analysis and findings Table 4.1 Students’ self-ratings of producing compliments and compliment responses 42 Table 4.2 MAQ average marks of the nine compliment strategies in the pre-phase 44 Table 4.3 MAQ average marks of the nine compliment strategies in the post-phase 46 Table 4.4 MAQ average marks of the compliment response strategies in the pre-phase 47 Table 4.5 MAQ average marks of the compliment response strategies in the post-phase 48 Table 4.6 Students’ compliments in DCQ in the pre-phase .50 Table 4.7 Students’ compliments in DCQ in the post-phase .51 Table 4.8 DCQ compliments in situations 1, and 11 in the pre-phase 52 Table 4.9 DCQ compliments in situations 1, and 11 in the post-phase .54 Table 4.10 DCQ compliments in situations 2, and 12 in the pre-phase 54 Table 4.11 DCQ compliments in situations 2, and 12 in the post-phase .55 Table 4.12 DCQ compliments in situations 3, and in the pre-phase 57 Table 4.13 DCQ compliments in Situations 3, and in the post-phase 58 Table 4.14 DCQ compliments in situations 4, and 10 in the pre-phase 60 Table 4.15 DCQ compliments in situations 4, and 10 in the post-phase 61 Table 4.16 DCQ compliment responses in the pre-phase 62 Table 4.17 Detailed combinations of the pre-questionnaire compliment responses .63 Table 4.18 DCQ compliment responses in the post-phase 64 Table 4.19 Detailed combinations of the post-questionnaire compliment responses 65 Table 4.20 DCT compliment responses in situations 1, and 11 66 Table 4.21 Detailed combinations of compliment responses in situations 1, & 11 66 Table 4.22 DCT compliment responses in situations 2, and 12 .69 Table 4.23 Detailed combinations of compliment responses in situations 2, &12 69 Table 4.24 DCT compliment responses in Situations 3, and 72 Table 4.25 Detailed combinations of compliment responses in situations 3, & .72 Table 4.26 DCT compliment responses in situations 4, and 10 .74 Table 4.27 Detailed combinations of compliment responses in situations 4, & 10 75 LIST OF APPENDICES Page Appendix 1: Handouts for the instructions 89 Appendix 2: Survey Questionnaire 101 Appendix 3: Typical exercises .104 ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS Appro : Appropriate DCQ : Discourse Completion Questionnaire ESL/ EFL : English as a Second Language/ English as a Foreign Language Inappro : Inappropriate M&W1 : Manes and Wolfson formula M&W2 : Manes and Wolfson formula M&W3 : Manes and Wolfson formula M&W4 : Manes and Wolfson formula M&W5 : Manes and Wolfson formula M&W6 : Manes and Wolfson formula M&W7 : Manes and Wolfson formula M&W8 : Manes and Wolfson formula M&W9 : Manes and Wolfson formula MAQ : Metapragmatic Assessment Questionnaire S(s) : Student(s) SAQ : Self-Assessment Questionnaire T : teacher ... consequences of: helping students to have a deep understanding of speech act performance: giving and responding to compliments in American English; and encouraging the students to practice that speech act. .. structure and function of speech acts, there is another approach to divide speech acts into direct and indirect speech acts In English, according to Yule (1997: 54 -55 ), there are three kinds of structural... the learners of foreign languages avoid cultural conflicts or communication breakdown 2.1.3 The Speech Act of Giving and Responding to Compliments The speech act of compliments and compliment