Students’ pragmatic awareness and implications for english classroom teaching at Thuong Mai University

 STUDENTS’ PRAGMATIC AWARENESS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR 
 ENGLISH CLASSROOM TEACHING 
 AT THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY 
 Pham Thuy Giang* 
 Thuong Mai University 
 Received: 18/09/2017; Revised: 25/10/2017; Accepted: 30/08/2018 
 Abstract: This study was carried out to examine Thuong Mai non-English major students’ 
 awareness of two speech acts of requesting and greeting, their pragmalinguistic and 
 sociopragmatic understanding based on these speech acts. The participants were 5 Americans 
 and 50 non-English major freshmen at Thuong Mai University (TMU). Two survey 
 questionnaires were employed as research instruments. The results show that the students’ 
 awareness of speech acts was low. The speech act of requesting comes to the fore with the 
 larger number of participants having the correct answers, whereas the speech act of greeting 
 enjoyed the lower correct response rate. The students’ understanding of pragmalinguistic and 
 sociopragmatic aspects was still limited. The aspect of politeness was paid the most attention 
 to while that of cultural norms was least focused on. A number of suggestions for promoting 
 students’ pragmatic awareness were given to TMU teachers and students of English. 
 Key words: Intercultural communication, pragmatic awareness, speech acts 
1. Introduction 
 As a teacher of English at TMU, from her own observations and experience, the researcher has 
noticed that TMU students often experience difficulties in communicating in English when involved in 
different communication situations in the 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 have not been 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 may be due to the fact that they are not really aware of pragmatic 
aspects or do not put enough emphasis on them. 
 Such a situation has inspired the author to conduct research into “Students’ pragmatic awareness 
and implications for English classroom teaching at Thuong Mai University” with a focus on TMU 
first-year non-English major students’ pragmatic awareness. Some pedagogical implications are also 
discussed to help raise the students’ pragmatic awareness and increase English teaching effectiveness. 
 The study aimed at answering two research questions: 
 1. How much are TMU first-year non-English major students aware of English pragmatic aspects? 
 2. What should be done to improve the students’ pragmatic awareness? 
* Email: giangmrchip@yahoo.com 
2. Theoretical framework 
2.1. Pragmatics 
 Since its introduction by Morris (1938, p. 6-7) 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 the use of context to make inferences about meaning” (Fasold, 1990, p. 119). 
 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. 
 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. 
2.2. Speech acts 
2.2.1. Definitions 
 The speech act theory is attributed to Austin (1962), who claimed “many utterances, termed 
performatives, do not only communicate information, but 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. 
2.2.2. Categories of speech acts 
 Searle (1979, p. 12) provided a classification of speech acts according to their functions, dividing 
them into five categories, including 
 (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 affa ... his/her sincerity, and the 
addressee will generally not decline the invitation at last because the refusal is supposed to threaten the 
speaker’s face. However, according to the surveyed Americans, in their culture, repeated invitations are 
considered improper and even rude. In their view, others should not impede their freedom even though 
the invitations are made politely. Therefore, the inviters always use the pattern “I will have a..., come if 
you want to” or “How about...?” or ‘‘Would you like to...?”. Among 32% of the students who considered 
this invitation appropriate, five were aware of this difference between the two cultures. One example is “I 
think it is an invitation which shows that Phuong does not impose his will on his colleague but gives 
options to make him feel free and not awkward.” 
4.6. Awareness of parting 
 Table 7. Students’ awareness of parting 
 Correct Pragmalinguistic Sociopragmatic 
 Speech act Item answer Convention Convention Politeness Cultural 
 rate of forms of means norms 
 11 68% - 30% 26% 2% 
 Parting 12 16% - 4% - 2% 
 23 64% 4% 20% 6% - 
 24 42% - 16% 16% - 
 Mean 47.5% 
 For example, in question 11, 68% of the students chose the correct answer, A (Thank you for a 
lovely afternoon.), 13 informants (26%) could explain their choice clearly by mentioning politeness: 
 I think A is the choice because it is polite and appropriate to the situation, showing the guest’s gratitude 
 for the host’s hospitality. 
 One student claimed: 
 I think the setting here is in America, so the guest should do what Americans do. Therefore, A is the 
 correct answer. 
 The facet of pragmalinguistic awareness concerning conventions of means was reported by 15 
students. Examples are given as follows: 
 “It is a conventional ritual to separate.”, “Before parting, we should thank the host for a lovely time 
 spent in his house.”, “Thanking the host is the most suitable to show our gratitude.” 
 However, there were three students who could not give out their explanations. The reason might 
be that their choice was dictated by feeling without their understanding of this pragmatic aspect. 
4.7. Awareness of thanking and responding 
 Table 8. Students’ awareness of thanking and responding 
 Speech act Item Correct Pragmalinguistic Sociopragmatic 
 answer Convention Convention Politeness Cutural 
 rate of forms of means norms 
 Thanking 13 68% 2% 4% 36% 2% 
 and 21 10% 4% - - - 
 responding 14 22% - 6% 4% - 
 22 16% 2% - - - 
 Mean 29% 
 The Vietnamese pattern of responses to thanks is different from that of American. In Vietnam, 
people often say “No, no” or “It’s my duty” when replying to thanks, whereas American speakers often 
say something like “It’s my pleasure” or “You are welcome”. In cross-cultural communication, an 
American speaker may feel confused or unhappy when a Vietnamese replies his thanks by saying “It’s my 
duty to do that”. Having learned English for many years, most of the subjects are familiar with the 
English formulae of responding to thanks and can accept thanks naturally in most cases. As indicated in 
question 13, 68% of the subjects chose the correct answer A (You’re welcome.). Among them, 18 
students were aware of politeness. One student addressed convention of forms when saying, “You’re 
welcome” is suitable because it means “Không có gì” in Vietnamese.” The aspect of strategies was 
recognized by two students: “It is a popular response.” or “It is a polite response to “Thank you””. One 
student chose A based on her experience in watching films. The researcher put this into the cultural norm 
section. 
4.8. Awareness of conversation topics 
 Table 9. Students’ awareness of conversation topics 
 Correct Pragmalinguistic Sociopragmatic 
 Speech act Item answer 
 rate Convention Convention Politeness Cultural 
 of forms of means norms 
 Conversation 9 60% - - - 10% 
 topics 20% 
 26 36% - - 10% 4% 
 Mean 38.7% 
 The respondents showed limited knowledge of the target culture in this respect. Question 9 posed a 
situation in which the students had to choose more than one topic to continue a conversation with a 
strange person. 46% of the subjects chose A (Do you have any problems at work?), 32% chose B (Can 
you tell me about your family?), 4% chose D (How much you earn a month?), 12% chose E (How old are 
you?), 24% chose G (Are you interested in religion?) without knowing that these topics are all privacy to 
westerners. One student did not know what topic is suitable. There is a great difference in the students’ 
options of conversation topics. While over half of the students (60%) chose C (Would you like something 
to drink?), only one-fifth of them (20%) chose H (What do you do?) as suitable topics to discuss in their 
conversation. Only five students were aware of sociopragmatic aspect concerning cultural norms. 
Examples are as follows: 
 “It is not acceptable to talk about private things such as age, marital status or sensitive ones like 
 religion or problems. In this case, offering a drink can help the speakers prolong their conversation.”, 
 “Talking about careers may be suitable in conversations with a person you meet for the first time.” 
5. Implications 
 Since the students’ low pragmatic awareness resulted from their lack of pragmatic knowledge and 
cultural information associated with the target language, this research presents some suggestions for TMU 
English teachers and students in the areas of teaching and learning pragmatics and cultures. First, teachers 
should raise students’ pragmalinguistic awareness by providing their students with necessary language 
structures and expressions to convey a speech act and reminding students that a speech act (function) can 
be expressed in many forms and one form can convey many functions. Second, students’ awareness of 
politeness should be improved. 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. Third, it is advisable 
for teachers to enhance their learners’ awareness of cultural norms by integrating culture into language 
teaching, enforcing the teaching of British and American cultural background, creating culture-rich 
learning environment, designing a cultural syllabus, providing more authentic teaching materials, 
improving the pragmatic teaching in the way of holding tests and exams and developing teachers’ 
competence. 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. 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. Teachers should adopt different kinds of modern teaching aids and 
methods in order to strengthen the leading-in of culture, to make students have an immersed sense and 
learn English naturally. For instance, they could let students see English original movies, and be 
associated with language training program and making multimedia courseware. They can invite some 
foreign teachers to give a lecture and some experts to give a report, which widens the students’ outlook 
about culture and access a great deal of real English in order to intensify the understanding of cultural 
differences between Vietnam and western countries. 
6. Conclusion 
 In conclusion, by investigating students’ awareness of different facets of pragmatics, this study has 
been able to contribute to our knowledge of pragmatic awareness of speech acts in general and 
pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic awareness in particular in ways that will benefit not only teachers 
but students of English as well. 
 There are some limitations of the study that are worth mentioning. First, the scope of the study is 
still limited. Regarding participants, only first year students were in concern of the study. Therefore, the 
research results could not reflect fully students’ pragmatic awareness at TMU in general. Moreover, the 
small sample size (50 students) in the study can affect the generalizability of the research findings. Also, 
the research was done based entirely on the Americans’ responses. Therefore, only American cultural 
norms were of interest. Another limitation of the present study is that part of the questionnaire is 
multiple-choice questions. The advantage of this method is that it is relatively inexpensive, can be 
administered quickly to a large number of participants and allows the researcher to describe scenarios in 
detail. However, although a greater amount of contextual information can be provided, participants only 
receive written instructions, which, even if they are very precise, rely on a high degree of imagination on 
the participants’ part, since they can neither hear nor see the conversation in its context. As a 
consequence, participants have to imagine the speakers’ tone and facial expressions, which might lead to 
different assessments of the scenarios based on the individual participants’ ideas of how an utterance was 
intended by the speaker. 
References 
 Austin, J.L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon. 
 Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Griffin, R. (2005). L2 Pragmatic awareness: evidence from the ESL classroom. 
 System, 33(3), 401-415. 
 Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena. In E.N. 
 Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction (pp. 56-299). Cambridge: 
 Cambridge University Press. 
 Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: some universals in language usage. Cambridge: 
 Cambridge University Press. 
 Cook, M., & Liddicoat, A.J. (2002). The development of comprehension in interlingua pragmatics: the 
 case of request strategies in English. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 25(1), 19-39. 
 Fasold, R. (1990). Sociolinguistics of language. Oxford and Cambridge (US): Blackwell. 
 Garcia, P. (2004). Developmental differences in speech acts recognition: a pragmatic awareness study. 
 Language Awareness, 13(2), 96-115. 
 Hinkel, E. (1997). Appropriateness of advice: DCT and multiple choice data. Applied Linguistics, 18(1), 1-26. 
 Holmes, J. (2001). An introduction to sociolinguistics. England: Pearson Education Limited. 
 Kasper, G. & Roever, C. (2005). Pragmatics in second language learning. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook 
 of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 317-334). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. 
 Kasper, G. (1996). Introduction: pragmatics in SLA. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(2), 135-148. 
 Kasper, G. (1997). Can pragmatic competence be taught?. University of Hawaii: Second Language 
 Teaching and Curriculum Center. 
 Kasper, G. (2001). Four perspectives on L2 pragmatic development. Applied Linguistics, 22(4), 502-530. 
 Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman. 
 Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
 Malinowski, B. (1994). The problem of meaning in primitive languages. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 
 Mey, J. (1993). Pragmatics: an introduction. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. 
 Miles, M.B., & Huberman, A.M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis (2nd edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: 
 Sage Publications. 
 Morris, C.H. (1938). Foundation of the theory of signs. In. O. Neurath (Ed.), International 
 encyclopedia of unified science (vol. 1) (pp. 77-138). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
 Patton, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd version). Thousand Oaks, CA: 
 Sage Publications. 
 Rose K.R., & Kasper, G. (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
 Schauer, G. (2006). Pragmatic awareness in ESL and EFL contexts: contrast and development. 
 Language Learning, 56(2), 269-318. 
 Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 129-158. 
 Schmidt, R. (1994). Implicit learning and the cognitive unconscious: of artificial grammars and SLA. 
 In N. Ellis (Ed.), Implicit and explicit learning of languages (pp. 165-209). London: Academic Press. 
 Schmitt, N. (2002). Vocabulary in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
 Searle, J.R. (1979). Expression and meaning; studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge, UK: 
 Cambridge University Press. 
 Stalnaker, R. (1972). Pragmatics. In G. Harman & D. Davidson (Eds.), Semantics of natural language 
 (pp. 380-397). Dordrecht: Reidel. 
 Yule, G. (2006). The study of language. UK: Cambridge University Press.