scholarly journals REFUSAL STRATEGIES USED BY MALAY ESL STUDENTSAND ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKERS TO REFUSE A REQUEST

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Saad ◽  
Siti Jamilah Bidin ◽  
Ahmad Affendi Shabdin
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Politeness Theory ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
English Language Teachers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Refusal Strategies

The present study investigates similarities and differences of a speech act of refusal in English as realized by Malay Speakers of English (MSE) and Native Speakers of English (NSE). The study examined the types and also the contents of the strategies used by the two groups when refusing a request made by a higher status interlocutor. An Enhanced Open Role-play was utilized to obtain data on the types and content of refusal strategies. Participants of the study comprised 12 MSE undergraduate students from a local university and 12 NSE who were IGSCE and Diploma Baccalaureate students from an international school who had refused to the higher status interlocutor’s request. Qualitative data analytic methods were used to analyse the data which were classified into semantic refusal strategies and politeness strategies. Brown’s and Levinson’s politeness theory, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and Hall’s high- and low-context cultures were used to guide the study. The findings revealed that the two groups shared many similarities in terms of types and contents of the strategies when refusing to the higher status interlocutor’s requests. Nevertheless, the NSE demonstrated a higher use of direct strategies and the content of their indirect strategies and adjuncts to refusal strategies reflect the western individualistic values.  The MSEs,’ on the other hand exhibited the eastern values which prioritize group’s importance. These findings provide further insights on the complexities of refusal interaction and the patterns could be used by English language teachers as pragmatic input to develop English as a Second Language students’ ability to use socially appropriate language for the situation they encounter.

Refusal and Politeness Strategies of Malay Speakers of English As A Second Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Saad ◽  
Siti Jamilah Bidin ◽  
Ahmad Affendi Shabdin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
University Selection ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Linguistic Behaviour ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Refusal Strategies

Politeness is an essential part in human communication. It plays a pivotal role in establishing and maintaining good relationships and social harmony. It is reflected by linguistic and non-linguistic behavior through which we indicate that we take others’ feelings of how they should be treated into account.  The present study investigated the application of politeness strategies through the linguistic behaviour of twelve Malay English as a second language (MSE) undergraduate students when refusing their higher status interlocutor’s scholarship offer to pursue their studies at an overseas university. Selection of participants was based on a purposive sampling and on the students’ MUET results.  The study examined how these students employed politeness strategies as they struggled to find an equilibrium between defending their stance of not accepting the scholarship and at the same time maintaining civility towards a persistent university officer. Data on refusal interactions between the students and the university officer were obtained through an open role-play which were transcribed, classified into semantic refusal strategies, categorized into the types of sequence orders of the strategies and finally classified according to Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies. The repertoire of MSE refusal strategies reveals positive politeness to be dominant followed by bald-on-record while negative politeness was employed minimally. Using a combination of these three types of politeness, the MSE refusal interactions show variation of politeness ranging from less to more polite. The study revealed that the degree of politeness depend very much on participants’ effort to adapt to the context of situation. The variation of strategies which reflect different degree of politeness generated by the study would be useful as pragmatic input. This input could be utilized by English language teachers to raise pragmatic awareness and to develop their students’ ability to use socially appropriate language for the situation they encounter.

scholarly journals Pronunciation Errors of Letter “G” in English Language Made by Saudi Undergraduate Students

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huda Alqunayeer
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Loan Words ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
English Language Teachers ◽  
Academic Year

The primary goal of the present study is to identify the problematic areas in the pronunciation of the letter “g” in English written words made by Saudi female learners of English as a foreign language, and the reasons for the weakness associated with mispronunciation of English written words which contain this letter. The population of the study was the female students (90 students) and their English language teachers (12 teachers) at the Qassim University during the academic year (2014-2015). There were two types of instruments used in this study. The first was a pronunciation test for the student participants in order to investigate the problematic areas of pronouncing “g” in different environments in different words; and the second a questionnaire for the teacher participants to provide comprehensive data about the causes of these errors of pronouncing “g” committed by EFL female students at Qassim University. Ninety female students were included for the pronunciation test and 12 teachers were asked to answer the questionnaire. Simple percentage was used for analyzing the data of recording words (pronunciation test). Results of the students’ recording words revealed that the participants mispronounced “g” before nasals (68%). According to the results of the teachers’ responses to the questionnaire suggested many factors that can cause difficulties for students in terms of pronouncing “g” in English written words. According to them, these difficulties are concerned with reading difficulties, nonstandard spellings, letters that follow “g” (many of them may become combinations), loan words, orthography (no correspondence between the English alphabets and their sounds). The researcher offers recommendations that might help teachers and students to overcome and reduce these mispronunciations of this letter in English written words.

scholarly journals The X-Factor Profile Characteristics of English Language Teachers in Non-Native Setting

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arab World English Journal ◽  
Zarina Othman ◽  
Shahizan Shaharuddin ◽  
Azizah Ya’acob
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
English Teacher ◽  
English Language Teachers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Profile Characteristics ◽  
Learning English

Phrases such as ‘learning English is fun’ or ‘English is fun’ are often heard when one speaks about learning English especially in a context where English is not the mother tongue of the learners. What about when the focus shifts to English language teachers on the other hand, who are non-native speakers of English? The focus on the teacher other than the curriculum, syllabus, material and pedagogy needs considerable attention in promoting effective English language learning. What are the profile characteristics of an English teacher that can help most importantly first boost the students’ motivation and interest to learn English. Studies have explored in general the characteristics of effective language teachers but to what extent has it identified the ‘X’ factors. This paper addresses a discussion on the the profile characteristics of specifically non –native English language teachers. It focuses on the relevance of the ‘qualities’ of English language teachers’ in relations to English teacher attributes specifically.We gathered the views and opinions of English language instructors teaching English at one of the local higher institutions who are non-native and who have had twenty years’ experience in the field of ELT (English Language Teaching) on what they believe is the X factor characteristics profile of an English language teacher.

scholarly journals A Pedagogical View of English/Urdu Collocations

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Saleem Akhter ◽  
Behzad Anwar ◽  
Abrar Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Esl Students ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
English Language Teachers ◽  
Knowledge Of Language

To build a sound vocabulary and to give the basic knowledge of language to ESL students is one of the key issues for English language teachers in Pakistan. They emphasize single word vocabulary build-up along with grammatical construction of a sentence at the same time by making its Urdu translation without taking any considerable notice of the use of collocation (the naturally co-occurring words) not by chance but chosen by the native speakers consistently as a psycholinguistic consideration. This phenomenon results in the development of erroneous writing and speaking skills on the part of ESL students. So, the purpose of present study is to give a concrete description of English/Urdu collocations and to highlight the scope of English/Urdu collocations in Second Language Acquisition and Learning. A corpus based approach has been adopted to give the description of English/Urdu collocations based on contrastive analysis to point out the equivalent and non-equivalent collocations. The data is analyzed to emphasize the importance of teaching non-equivalent English/Urdu collocations to Pakistani students. This brief paper suggests the practical solutions of the present problem.

On professional identity of English language teachers

10.12737/3591 ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-108
Author(s):  
Галина Чудайкина ◽  
Galina Chudaykina
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Foreign Language Teachers ◽  
Professional Background ◽  
English Language Teachers ◽  
English Speaking

A vast majority of English language teachers in Russia are not native speakers with no or inadequately little personal experience of living in an English-speaking country. What are the specifics of teaching in view of such an authenticity-lacking professional background, and how does the personality of a teacher reveal itself and is transformed in the course of teaching? How does language teaching affect self-identification? What should a teacher focus on attaining or, by contrast, avoiding in view of the above-raised issues? A significant number of foreign language teachers who are not native speakers demonstrate a clear non-target-language-specific accent, thus, either inadvertently or purposefully, revealing and asserting their national identity. The author of the article aims at identifying the problems that the teacher’s explicit target-language-alien accent may cause to both learners and teachers, and the root causes of the accent resilience.

scholarly journals Suggestion and Refusal Strategies in English by Kurdish Undergraduate Students

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Yaseen Alzeebaree ◽  
Mehmet Yavuz
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Private Universities ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Statistical Analyses ◽  
Response Data ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Refusal Strategies

This paper investigated the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competence of Kurdish EFL undergraduate students through the speech acts of suggestion and refusal. Eighty-three Kurdish EFL undergraduate students and 14 native speakers of English participated in the study. Data were elicited using a Discourse Completion Task consisting of three suggestive and three refusal situations, and the responses were rated on a scale developed by the researcher. The response data for suggestions and refusals were coded according to the taxonomies of Martinez-Flor (2005) and Beebe et al. (1990), respectively. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 22. Four researchers rated the Kurdish EFL undergraduate students' responses in terms of appropriate pragmatic and linguistic forms. The results of the study revealed differences in the overall strategies and strategy patterns between the responses of Kurdish EFL undergraduate students and Native speakers of English groups, as well as differences between students of state and private universities.

scholarly journals Expressions of Attitudes in Students’ Narrative Writing: An Appraisal Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 333
Author(s):  
Sri Wuli Fitriati ◽  
Yuni Awalaturrohmah Solihah ◽  
Tusino Tusino
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Private University ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
English Department ◽  
Narrative Writing ◽  
Central Java ◽  
English Language Teachers ◽  
Basic English

This article investigated attitude, one of subsystem appraisal, in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university students’ narrative writings. Five narrative writing was selected purposefully from undergraduate students of the English Department at a local private university in Central Java. The findings demonstrate that the affect is the most dominant subsystem of attitude used in the students’ narrative writing to convey feelings and emotion of characters and events in the stories in order to make the readers involved in the stories. The prominent finding of this research implies that most students used expressions of attitudes which belong to basic English words and repetition of same words. This present research suggests English language teachers and lecturers pay more attention to the explicit teaching of attitudinal words usage in writing, especially narrative writing.

scholarly journals Blame the Message Senders Not the Messenger: The Defence Case of the English “Native Speaker” Teacher

2022 ◽  
Vol 2022 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Muneer Hezam Alqahtani
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
State University ◽  
Pay Gap ◽  
Nonnative Speaker ◽  
English Language Teachers ◽  
Native Speaker Teacher ◽  
The Uk

This article investigates how “native speaker” teachers define who a “native speaker” is and how they view themselves in relation to the concept. It further explores how they feel about discriminatory practices in employability and the pay gap that are systemically carried out against their “nonnative speaker” counterparts by recruiters. Data were gathered from 10 English language teachers: five males and five females from the UK, Canada, Ireland, and South Africa, who were hired by a state university in Saudi Arabia on the basis that they are “native speakers.” The findings show that although the place of birth and the official status of English in a given country were the main defining criteria for hiring a “native speaker,” the interviewees did not view the concept of the “native speaker” in the same ways as their recruiters did, who they believed used those criteria in an overly simplistic and reductive way rooted in native-speakerism. The findings also show that the participants did not enjoy the unjustified privileges given to them by their recruiters at the expense of their “non-native speaker” colleagues. Instead, in some cases, they attempted to confront their recruiters over such discriminatory practices, and in some others, they attempted to bridge the gap and ease the tension between themselves and their “nonnative speaker” counterparts, although these efforts were hindered by the system’s unfair and unjust practices.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document