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

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DAO THI HOA A STUDY OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS' REFUSALS IN ENGLISH AT CAM PHA HIGH SCHOOL Nghiên cứu về việc học sinh THPT Cẩm Phả sử dụng tiếng Anh để từ chối M.A. THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION) Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor : Dr. Nguyen Trong Du THAI NGUYEN – 2019 1 Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Rationale The idea that brings me to the topic of this study originated from my own story happening 15 years ago when I was a student at Thai Nguyen University. One morning, I and one of my classmates went to see our American teacher, Diane. When we had just been invited to sit down, she asked," Would you like something to drink?” my friend said: "A cup of tea, please" but I replied: "No, thanks". Then she brought out just only two cups of tea, one for her and one for my friend. I felt a bit surprised because normally in our Vietnamese home, we often offer some kinds of drink to everyone who comes to see us although the guess often says to the host: Oh, there's no need or you are so careful. Such a situation let me think a lot about the differences in culture between Vietnamese and Western people. That means the Vietnamese often do not directly say what they actually mean, but the West prefer a direct speech act and it is easier to understand. The given situation raised us a question that to learn a language means we also have to learn more about another culture. As a non-native teacher of English, I find myself that it is not enough just to show learners words, structures, and other language patterns, but we also have to guide them how to use the language into real life situations effectively and naturally. It is pragmatics that helps us a lot in dealing with such problems. Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics dealing with the language in use and the context in which it is used. And in pragmatics, speech act is an element that a speaker performs when making an utterance. We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, a greeting, a request, a complaint, an invitation, a compliment or a refusal. It means speech acts realize real-life communications. Therefore, when English teachers are following the communicative approach in teaching, certain aspects of language use as speech acts need to be taken into 2 account. The refusal speech act used by high school students is a problem which gains much my attention. The first concern is the high school students' communicative competence. It is inevitable to all teachers of English in communicative language teaching (CLT). The language learners' environment as CLT techniques, the interaction with one another, authentic texts, in class and outside of class is a consideration. However, with my experience in teaching high-school students, many of them cannot reply a request, an offer in the way the English native speakers do, especially in refusing, they may cause misunderstanding or even face threatening to the hearer. The next matter is the content of textbook (Tieng Anh 10, 11, 12 )( both 7 years and 10 years). Each unit includes 4 skills and language focus in which the authors have tried to provide authentic materials for the students to practice. However, how to adapt these sources to be suitable for students to make use of them in communication is a concern. Moreover, politeness strategies, which is used to soften the threat to each other's face is also very important to help a conversation successful but Vietnamese culture affects politeness strategies, especially the ways high school students refuse an offer, an invitation, a suggestion because of the indirect ways of refusing in the way the Vietnamese often do to others. This study was conducted with the expectation to find out how high school students refuse to an invitation and a request, whether there is any difference between what they think they will refuse and the way they really refuse in a given situation. From the data analysis, I will know more about how Vietnamese cultural influence on their way of speaking English. After that, some suggestions will be noted down to help work out the more effective ways of teaching English according to communicative language teaching approach. 1.2. Aims of the study The overall of the study aim is to explore how Vietnamese culture affects refusing strategies in English by Vietnamese high school students. From the 3 investigation, this study will help to find out to what extent Vietnamese high school students can apply their knowledge into practice, and to suggest some ways for integrating cultural practices into the high shool curriculum. 1.3. Research questions Following the aims, the study tries to answer the two questions as (1) How do high school students refuse in English? (2) Are there any differences between the written and spoken refusals? 1.4. Scope of the study This study focuses on refusing speech act to the invitations and requests in English made by high school students. The study is conducted at Cam Pha High School in Quang Ninh province. 200 students of grade 10 at Cam Pha High School are involved in the study. The study has been carried out in the second semester of academic year 2018-2019 with only 10th graders; thus, the respondents does not represent for all students who study English major in Vietnam. These students are surveyed to work out how they refuse to the invitations and requests in English and which Vietnamese cultural practice affects their refusing speech act. 1.5. Significance of the study The present study partly contributes to provoke both theoretical and practical utilization of English in communicative situations for the learners. Theoretically, in spite of certain number of studies previously conducting the investigation into the refusals in English, they mainly discuss the difference between the ways Vietnamese respond to a situation and the ones of the Western people. In practice, the speech acts such as the invitations, the offers or requests and how to respond them are one of the key points in communicating in daily lifestyles. However, there has been some gaps between the syllabus for teaching English at high schools and the ability of using English of students authentically. Thus, this study with a view to finding out the gap between the English in current textbooks and everyday English in the aspects of culture will help students get access to practical English. Furthermore, for the teachers of English, this study is believed to raise the question of the importance of shifting their teaching approach from teacher-centered to 4 student-centered. This is relevant to the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, which has been boosted in the English teaching lessons in education system of all levels in Vietnam in recent years. 1.6. Design of the study The study is divided into three main parts: the Introduction, the Development and the Conclusion with Reference with five chapters Chapter 1: Introduction - deals with the rationale, aims, scope, methods, significance and design of the study Chapter 2: Literature Review- is about to give some theoretical background related to pragmatics, speech acts, refusing strategies, politeness strategies, semantic formulas, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and previous studies relating to the topic of the research. Chapter 3: Methodology- shows the research governing orientation, research methods and performs the situation analysis, participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures and data analysis. The detailed results of the DCT and role-play and a universal analysis on the collected data are shown. Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions - presents major findings and discussions from the data collected in both DCT and role-play. Chapter 5: Conclusion- concludes a review of the study, limitations of the study and recommends suggestions for further researches. 5 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW It is stated in the previous chapter that the object of this study is the refusals in English made by the Vietnamese high school students. The refusal is one of the speech acts in everyday life and speech acts are core issues of pragmatics, a branch of linguistics. All of these concepts will be described in this chapter. 2.1. Pragmatics and speech act theory 2.1.1. Pragmatics Pragmatics has been emerged as a branch of modern linguistics because it is the "science of language as it is used by real, live people, for their own purposes and within their limitations and affordances" (Mey, 1993, p. 5). Pragmatics is used to be defined as "the study of language in use" (G. Brown & Yule, 198, p. 27). Jenny Thomas in Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics (1995) mentions pragmatics as "a study of meaning in interaction". The advent of pragmatics helps to answer the question of why an utterance is semantically correct but it may cause misunderstanding for the hearers if they do not know in which context the speaker delivered the utterance. Pragmatics has played such a preliminary role in teaching and learning English procedure. Teaching and learning English as EFL has been paid much attention worldwide because English an international language that connects people all around the world. However, English is spoken in different settings and levels of intercommunication among all English speakers who do not share a language or a culture. As a result, speakers must know many pragmatic elements in order to avoid inaccuracies and misunderstandings during communication. As a matter of fact, such a great usage of English language requires a pragmatic competence which will help all those who speak or learn English as a second language. Thomas defined pragmatic competence as “… the ability to analyze language in a conscious manner.” (cited in Holmes & Brown, 2007, p. 524). The meaning includes verbal 6 and non-verbal elements and it varies according to the context, to the relationship between utterers, also to many other social factors. Pragmatic competence should be considered as a optimum goal for all those who teach English as a second language, which constantly represents a challenging task as well. Pragmatic competence refers to the ability to comprehend, construct utterances which are accurate and appropriate to the social and cultural circumstances where the communication occurs. Pragmatics can be simply understood as a way we convey the meaning through the communication in practice. For the learners, especially students at school, pragmatics can be seen as the concrete evidence of students' ability of speaking English to achieve communication goals. Pragmatic transfer in refusals is also a remarkable concern. It is likely that L2 learners may rely on their native language pragmatic knowledge to perform the target language refusals which may result in pragmatic failures. It occurs when speakers apply rules from their first language (L1) to their second language (L2). Beebe et al. (1990), for example, reported evidence of pragmatic transfer in refusals made by Japanese learners of English. It was found that the content of excuses in both Japanese and English made by Japanese learners of English was far less specific than the content of excuses made by American participants. Language proficiency is also an important factor in pragmatic transfer, although the analysis has not led to conclusive results. Takahashi and Beebe (1987) proposed the positive correlation hypothesis, predicting that L2 proficiency is positively correlated with pragmatic transfer. Despite the fact that Takahashi and Beebe’s own study on refusals performed by Japanese EFL and ESL learners did not clearly present the predicted proficiency effect, some studies (e.g. Cohen & Olshtain, 1981; Blum-Kulka, 1982; Olshtain & Cohen, 1989; Cohen, 1997; Hill, 1997; Keshavarz et al., 2006) have supported Takahashi and Beebe’s notion that learners’ limited target language knowledge prevents them from transferring native language pragmatic knowledge. For example, Takahashi and Beebe’s (1987) results 7 showed that highly proficient Japanese ESL learners often used a typically Japanese formal tone when performing refusals in L2. Also as mentioned by Keshavarz et al. (2006), more proficient students had enough control over the L2 to express their first language feelings at the pragmatic level. 2.1.2. Speech acts In the field of pragmatics, speech acts represent a key concept. It can be broadly defined as language use in context taking into account the speaker’s and the addressee’s verbal and non-verbal contributions to the negotiation of meaning in interaction. It is a unit in which the speakers perform what they want to express by producing utterances. According to Austin (1962), a single speech act actually contains three separate but related speech acts: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. According to Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay's in Philosophy of Language: The Central Topics (2007), locutionary acts are "the mere acts of producing some linguistic sounds or mark with a certain meaning or reference". Meanwhile, further Austin considers locutionary act as the act of saying something which has a meaning and creates an understandable utterance to convey or express. In his point of view, illocutionary act is performed as an act of saying something or as an act of opposed to saying something. The illocutionary utterance has a certain force of it. It is well-versed with certain tones, attitudes, feelings, or emotions. There will be an intention of the speaker or others in illocutionary utterance. It is often used as a tone of warning in day today life. Therefore, it can be seen as an offer, an apology, a promise an invitation, a request or a reply to a question. Perlocutionary act normally creates a sense of consequential effects on the hearers. The effects may be in the form of thoughts, imaginations, feelings or emotions. The effect upon the addressee is the main characteristic of perlocutionary utterances. Pragmatics is also the performance of speech acts. Austin, together with his collaborator, Searle, presented their speech act theory basically on single sentences and only on the speaker' point of view. Therefore, his theory has been shown out 8 many drawbacks with much criticism from other authors. Hatch (1983) argued that "the same sentences may have the different meanings when said in different situations. Archer et al., (2012) replaced "speech acts" with "a discourse act" or "communicative act". Thus, speech acts also take the hearer's perception and reception into consideration. 2.2. Refusals and the refusing strategies 2.2.1. Refusing definition As mentioned in the speech acts, the illocutionary utterance as can be seen as an offer, an apology, a promise, an invitation, a requests or a reply to a question. In this study, one of the illocutionary utterances will be observed and investigated is the refusal to an invitation and a request. Refusing can be understood as the speaker directly or indirectly says no to his/her interlocutor’s request, invitation or suggestion. Searl (1977) re-classifies speech acts into five categories and he categorizes refusals into commissives because they commit the refuser to not performing an action. Meanwhile, Brown and Levinson (1987) stated that refusals are face-threatening acts and in the same way as disagreeing and disapproving. Refusing is an act that expresses the refuser's negative evaluation to the refusee' prior act, threatening the positive face want of a refusee and showing little care about the refusee's feelings. Gass & Houck (1999) mentioned refusals as speech acts that occur as negative responses to other acts such as requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions. Brown and Levinson (1987), Fraser (1990), Smith (1998) also agree that refusals are sensitive to social variables such as gender, age, level of education, power and social distance. Hence, refusals are significant to explore the various cultural aspects of language from the sociolinguistic perspective. Brasdefer (2006) claims that refusals are complex speech acts that require not only long sequences of negotiation and cooperative achievements, but also ‘‘face - saving maneuvers to accommodate the noncompliant nature of the act.” (Gas and Houck, 1999, P.2). In general, refusing is a speech act consisting of both social and linguistic patterns. 9 2.2.2. Refusing strategies Refusing is complex issue and this speech act has attracted researchers’ attention as mentioned. Among the existing studies, the most influential and bestknown study on refusals is namely Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy. In their study, they use DCT as a tool to examine how Japanese learners of English refused requests, invitations, offers and suggestions. Their classification is divided into semantic formulas, which are the expressions used to perform a refusal and adjuncts, that is, expressions which occur with a refusal but themselves not be used to perform a refusal. The two components - semantic formulas and adjuncts- are described as follow: Classification of Refusals I. Direct A. Performative (e.g., “I refuse”) B. Non performative statement 1. “No’ 2. Negative willingness/ability (“I can’t.” “I won’t.”..) II. Indirect A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. Statement of regret (e.g., “I’m sorry…”) Wish (e.g., “I wish I could help you…”) Excuse, reason, explanation (e.g., “I am busy with my homework") Statement of alternative 1. I can do X instead of Y (e.g., “I’d rather…”) 2. Why don’t you do X instead of Y (e.g., “Why don’t you ask someone else?”) Set condition for future or past acceptance (e.g., “If I am invited next time…”) Promise of future acceptance (e.g., “I promise I’ll…” or “Next time I’ll …” – using “will” of promise or “promise”) Statement of principle (e.g., “ I never do business with friends.”) Statement of philosophy (e.g., “One can’t be too careful.”) Attempt to dissuade interlocutor 1. Threat of statement of negative consequences to the requester (e.g., “I won’t be any fun tonight” to refuse an invitation) 10 2. Guilt trip (e.g., waitress to customers who want to sit a while: “I can’t make a living off people who just order coffee.”) 3. Criticize the request/requester, etc. (statement of negative feeling or opinion); insult/attack (e.g., “Who do you think you are?”) 4. Request for help, empathy, and assistance by dropping or holding the request. 5. Let interlocutor off the hook (e.g., "Okay." “Don’t worry about it.”) 6. Self-defense (e.g., “I’m trying my best.” ) J. Acceptance that functions as a refusal 1. Unspecific or indefinite reply 2. Lack of enthusiasm K. Avoidance 1. Nonverbal a. Silence b. Hesitation c. Do nothing d. Physical departure 2. Verbal a. Topic switch b. Joke c. Repetition of part of request, etc. (e.g., “Monday?”) d. Postponement (e.g., “I’ll think about it.”) e. Hedging (e.g. “I’m not sure.”) Adjuncts to refusals 1. Statement of positive opinion/feeling or agreement (“That sounds good …”; “I’d love to…”) 2. Statement of empathy (e.g., “I realize you are in a difficult situation”) 3. Pause fillers (e.g., “er”; “well”; “oh”; “uhm”) 4. Gratitude/appreciation Following the classification, the refusers may employ some refusing strategies to respond to certain speech acts. They can say "No" to refuse a request, an offer or an invitation in a direct way. However, due to the face-threatening nature the refusal involves, which means it threatens the addressee’s negative face, refusing usually includes various strategies which aim to avoid offending the other interlocutor. Indirectness strategies are frequently used to avoid face- threatening of a refusal. According to 11 Al- Eryani (2007), “refusal is a face-threatening act to the listener/ requester/ inviter, because it contradicts his or her expectations, and is often realised through indirect strategies”(p.21). Indirectness is a highly-used strategy in Vietnamese refusing. It can be seen from the studies of the Vietnamese writers such as M. T. P. Nguyễn (2006), T. V. Q. Phan (2001), and C. M. Trần (2005c). All of them agree that indirectness is a preferred refusing strategy to avoid confrontation and conduct defense. Beebe et al, (1990) shows that the indirectness of refusing results in the fact that the message of a refusal is often hidden in another speech act such as a blame, a complaint, a topic switch, a joke or a statement of principle. Refusing in fact is a complex issue. However, this speech act has been a concern to many writers who carried out various studies on this aspect. They are Kitao (1996), Felix-Brasdefer (2003), Al-Kahtani 2005, Tran, C. M. (2005c), Bardovi-Harlig et al-2008, Campillo (2009), Ebsworth, M.E & Kodama-2011. (See References). In these studies, the writers have shown many differences in refusing among English learners from different cultures. Vietnamese culture is not an exception. Vietnamese refusing speech act is a topic that has been conducted in many studies such as Phương thức biểu hiện hành vi từ chối lời cầu khiến trong tiếng Anh (liên hệ với tiếng Việt) by Tran Chi Mai (2005c), (2005d), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Refusals of requests by Australian native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English by Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong (2006), and The culture of Vietnamese refusing: A mixed-methods multi-perspectival approach by Nguyen Trong Du (2016). 2.2.3. The notion of face in politeness and refusing strategies It is obviously realized from the findings of the previous studies on refusals in English that indirect strategies is preferred due to the face- savings or facethreatening avoidance. “Face” is “something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced and must be constantly attended to interaction.” (Brown and Levinson,1987, p.66). According to Brown and Levinson (1987), an individual's 12 face needs motivate us to apply politeness strategies. Face here refers to the individual's self-esteem, and these authors mention that both positive face and negative face are wished to be maintained by all individuals. Goffman (1967) gives the definition of "face work" - the way in which people maintain their face. He also describes politeness in as "the appreciation an individual shows to another through avoidance or presentation of rituals".( Interaction Rituals: Essays in Face-to-face Behaviour, p.77). Meanwhile Leech (1983) considers politeness as forms of behavior aim at creating and maintaining harmonious interaction. Based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) framework of politeness, three kinds of politeness systems: 1) difference, 2) solidarity, and 3) hierarchical and two contextual variables, a) power and b) distance between participants, are involved in determining the politeness system are proposed by Scollon, Scollon and Jones (2012). In Vietnamese culture, the framework can be seen obviously through the way people greet and address the others in daily conversations. One factor that closely relates to politeness is face-threatening act (FTA). Nguyen Thi Mai Phuong (2006) recommends in her dissertation that in daily communication, people may pose a threat to another individual’s self-image, or create a “face-threatening act” (FTA). These acts impede the freedom of actions (negative face), and the wish that one’s wants be desired by others (positive face) – by either the speaker, or the addressee, or both. Requests potentially threaten the addressee’s face because they may restrict the addressee’s freedom to act according to his/her will (Holtgraves 2002, p.40). Refusals, on the other hand, may threaten the addressee’s positive face because they may imply that what he/she says is not favored by the speaker. In an attempt to avoid FTAs, interlocutors use specific strategies to minimize the threat according to a rational assessment of the face risk to participant. 2.2.4. Refusing in relation to Vietnamese politeness strategies Assessment of the face risk to the other interlocutor is also a typical feature of Vietnamese culture, which results from the influence of Confucianism ideology 13 remnants. It decides whether the addresser use the politeness strategies or not in refusing a request, an invitation or an offer and so on. According to Nguyen Trong Du (2016), to understand how people use language, for example what strategies they use in refusing and why they rely on such strategies, one must get to know about their cultural backgrounds. The refuser may commit the face-threatening act when the refusee is at a higher social status, more powerful and he/she appreciate the closer distance. This is also a cultural factor discussed by Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov (2010). They argue that superiors are people who have the privilege to make their own rules and to initiate contact with subordinates. Employees are thus expected to do as they are told and therefore expect their ideal boss to be a “benevolent autocrat or a ‘good father'" (p. 73). Brown and Levinson (1987) are probably considered the most influential authors in politeness theory. They produce the following figure shows strategies that are chosen when a speaker does an FTA to a listener. Face threatening acts (FTAs) can be done: + on the record - unambiguously and with a certain directness, it show exactly what the actor has in mind + off the record - ambiguously and with a certain indirectness, the actor cannot be held to a particular intent + baldly, without redress - clearly, unambiguously and in the most direct manner (e.g. Do X! / Don't do Y) + with redress – to give face and counteract potential face damage Figure 1: Brown and Levinsons (1987) - Strategies for doing an FTA 14 Their figure showing the strategies for doing FTA consists of two types of politeness strategies: positive strategies and negative strategies. Following the figure, positive politeness strategies are those which show the closeness, intimacy, and rapport between speaker and hearer and negative politeness strategies are those which indicate the social distance between speaker and hearer. Here it is one of the linguistic functions that express the social distance between speakers and their different role relationships. It is the face-work which is an attempt to establish, maintain, and save face during conversations carried out in a speech community. Different languages are distinguishable from each other in employing which politeness strategies in conducting speech acts. Refusing is not an exception. Deference is heavily paid much attention to in Vietnamese refusals because of deeply- seated beliefs by Confucian philosophies. Take Japan for example. Japan is also an Asian country like Vietnam. In a study, a Japanese writer, Ueda (1972), listed 16 ways to avoid saying "No" in Japanese (Vague no, silence, delaying answers, among others). Some years later, Rubin (1983) claimed that there were the following 9 ways of refusing across a number of cultures: In an early attempt to classify the realization of refusals, 1. Be silent, hesitate, show a lack of enthusiasm 15 2. Offer an alternative 3. Postponement 4. Blame on a third party or something over which you are out of control 5. Avoidance 6. General acceptance of an offer or an invitation but giving no details 7. Divert and distract the addressee 8. General acceptance with excuses 9. Say what is offered is inappropriate It is universally agreed among many studies on refusals that Vietnamese people choose the same strategies in refusing to an invitation or a request without having to say "No" in a direct way. 2.3. The previous studies on refusals 2.3.1. Cross-cultural refusal studies Kwon (2004) agrees that refusing can be a difficult speech act to perform appropriately both linguistically and psychologically because the possibility of offending the interlocutor is inherent in the act itself and a failure to refuse appropriately can risk the interpersonal relationship. Nguyen Trong Du (2016) claims that refusing usually includes various strategies which are aimed at avoiding offending the other interlocutor. Therefore, the previous cross-cultural refusal studies are dealing with the refusals under the aspect of cultural influence. Zohreh Rasekh Eslami (2010) has a conclusion that the cross-cultural studies on refusals show that different cultures perform refusals differently. Their degree of directness in refusals, their sensitivity to social variables, and their performance in terms of the content of strategies might vary. Many authors agreed on the face-threatening nature of refusals. T AlEryani (2007, p. 21) d e f i n e d refusal as a face-threatening act to the listener/ requester/inviter, because it contradicts his or her expectations, and is often realized through indirect strategies. H. J. Chen (1996) also claimed a direct refusal as a simple negative is not a common strategy for communicators, 16 regardless of their language background. Thus, it is undeniable that the face threatening nature results in the use of indirectness of refusing strategies. From the Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy, it can be seen the fact that the indirectness of refusing the message of a refusal is often hidden in another speech act such as a blame, a complaint, a topic switch, a joke, a statement of principle so on and so forth (see Beebe et al, 1990). In addition, some Vietnamese writers, such as T. M. P. Nguyen (2006), T.V. Q. Phan (2001), and C. M. Trần (2005c) all reached the conclusion that indirectness is a highly-used strategy in Vietnamese refusing. Most participants employed indirect refusals to respond to a request, an invitation or a suggestion to avoid confrontation and offence. The differences in cultural practices among the countries are the key linguistic resources in cross-cultural studies. In the dissertation of Nguyen Trong Du (2016), he shows the two points of views of Thomas (1983) dealing with pragmatics. She argued that when dealing with students’ pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication, pragma-linguistic failure can be easier to fix than socio-pragmatic failure. She claimed this is because the linguistic conventionalized forms “can be taught quite straightforwardly as ‘part of the grammar’ whereas socio-pragmatic failure relates to the student’s cultural beliefs as much as his/her knowledge of the language. In general, the cross-cultural studies on refusals gain a conclusion that despite the sharing of similar strategies in refusing among different cultures, the choice of directness, mitigation and the explanation or reasons for a refusal may vary across the cultures. 2.3.2. Interventional studies on refusals While there are a number of studies which investigate refusal speech act from cross-cultural perspectives, the number of interventional studies on the effects of instruction on learners' acquisition of polite refusal strategies is restricted. The writers such as King & Silver, 1993; Morrow, 1996; Kondo, 2001, 2008; Bacelar 17 Da Silva, 2003 conducted their interventional studies and have made significant contribution to apply pragmatics in teaching and learning English process. In King and Silver's study (1993), a pre-test/post-test treatment with a control group design is used, and taught polite refusal strategies to six intermediate level learners of ESL. Discussions of personal experience, reading and analysis of dialogues, explicit teaching, and role-plays were implemented during a seventyminute class. However, the learners had not many opportunities for out- put practice because of time constraints. A discourse completion questionnaire as a pre-test and post-test and telephone talks as a delayed post-test were used as research tools. The results showed limited effect of instruction on the written post-test and no effect on the delayed post-test. The authors reveal that the lack of exposure to natural data as input and limited output practice opportunities could have caused the minimum effect of instruction. Morrow (1996) studied the effect of instruction on learners’ production of refusals and complaint speech acts. His study followed a pre-test/post-test design, without a control group. He adopted an explicit approach which included explanation of semantic formulas, controlled output practice, and role plays for teaching the intended speech acts. The results of the study showed that learners improved both in clarity and politeness. However, the delayed post-test results (6 months after) did not display a significant treatment effect. The weakness of the study is that the non-significant delayed post-test results could be attributed to the small number of participants who came for the post-test. Kondo (2001), a Japanese writer, conducted another interventional study on refusals involving thirty-five Japanese learners of English. Her study on refusals is the most recent study in this area. She examined the instructional effects after teaching the learners with methods and materials that were specifically developed for teaching pragmatics to Japanese. Similar to Morrow’s (1996) study, this study used a pre-test/post-test design without a control group. A DCT was used for both pre-test and post-test data. The results showed the effectiveness of instructional treatment and a change in learners’ refusals approximating target language 18 (American English) refusals. The instructional procedure raised awareness concerning various pragmatic aspects involved in the speech act of refusals reflects the content of the class discussions. Overall, the interventional studies on English refusals reveal the effectiveness of instruction on pragmatic development of learners. On the other hands, the aspect of linguistic applications has been a concern to researchers, educationists and teachers. They have been trying to work out the link between the pragmatics and English communication approach. Both cross-cultural studies and interventional studies on English refusals employ Beebe et al.’s (1990) classification of refusal strategies to cover refusal strategies in response to invitations, requests, suggestions, and offers. Their classification system of strategies is therefore all-inclusive, and can be used for teaching refusals that are the second pair part of any of these speech acts. Therefore, in the current study, in order to maintain focus and be practical, only refusals to invitations and requests are examined. The refusees are only Vietnamese high school students, thus no comparison between the native English speakers and non-native counterparts was made. In terms of cultural aspects, this study is about to show any factors that may affect interlocutors when refusing in English. 19 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLODY This study was conducted in order to examine that how Vietnamese culture affects high school students in choosing the refusing strategies when they are engaged in the daily conversations in English. To achieve the purposes, this study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods - mixed methods approach. 3.1. Study method This study investigates how Vietnamese high school students refuse in English and explore whether there is any difference between the written and spoken refusals; hence, there was a need to examine high school students in both categories of using English: writing and speaking refusals in English. To check the students' written refusals, the written DCT in form of a survey questionnaire was delivered to collect data in a short period of time over 200 students of grade 10 at Cam Pha High School. Additionally, role-play was used to gather data in the form of spoken refusals made by the participants who had attended the DCT. The point from using these instruments is to form a complete understanding about the study and make the findings more valid and objective through a mixed method research. Mixed methods research has increased in popularity in recent years. According to Cresswell (2014, 4th ed.) in Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed method Approaches, mixed method is “an approach to inquiry that combines both qualitative and quantitative forms of research. It involves philosophical assumptions, the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches, and the mixing or integrating of both approaches in a study.” Mixed method research has been defined as “the class of research where the researcher mixes or combines quantitative and qualitative research techniques, methods, approaches…in a single study” (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004, p.17). Manfred Max Bergman (2012) in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Mixed Methods Research and Design concluded that “Despite these weaknesses, challenges, or unresolved problems, MMRD (mix method research design) often offers considerable advantages compared to mono- method research. It can cross-validate 20