Pragmatic Errors and Transfer of Foreign Learners of Indonesian: The Case of Refusals

Abstract

Pragmatic transfer, an emerging part of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), has been receiving serious attention from applied linguists currently. This study was aimed at investigating pragmatic errors and pragmatic transfer learners made and effect of second language (L2) proficiency to their pragmatic transfer. Eighteen students of Darmasiswa who have been learning Indonesian language and culture form Bali State Polytechnic (PNB) and from Teacher Training Institute of Saraswati Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia were involved as research participants. Discourse completion test (DCT) consisting of nine situations designed with sociocultural aspect of power, distance, and rank of imposition (PDR) was used to elicit data of refusal strategies. The data were analysed to see pragmatic errors, pragmatic transfer, and effect of L2 proficiency on participants’ pragmatic transfer. Result of analysis revealed that learners’ pragmatic competence was still low. They were pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic errors made dealing with Indonesian noun phrase (NP) structure, the use of verb, noun, prepositions which are very different from English patterns. Moreover, pragmatic transfer was frequently made due to learners’ shortage of L2 pragmatic proficiency and learners’ L1 cultural knowledge. In addition, learners’ pragmatic transfer was found to be strongly influenced by learners’ L2 proficiency.

College Students' Learning Performance, Teaching Skills, and Teaching Innovation in Intercultural Communication Class: Evidence Based on Experiential Learning Theory

“…Teaching is one of the critical methods that are important for the students to provide all the information related to the course material and educational performance (Widanta et al, 2019 ). In past, teaching was not strategically analyzed by different teachers in different institutes because it was believed that students must be provided with the cost material in any way (Smith et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Similarly, with this advanced kind of strategy, it would be expected that the teacher would play an important role in the critical learning of the students. Not only, in the advanced countries but in the modern time, in the backward countries, opportunity for critical learning is provided to the students by the teachers to improve their standard of learning because it is believed that if the students are provided with innovative teaching methods, then they would be able to think out of the box (Widanta et al, 2019 ; Asmus, 2021 ). All students have different mindsets and they have different skills and abilities to cope with different kinds of problems that are hurdles in the way of teaching (Hernandez-Olivan et al, 2022 ; Meng and Yang, 2022 ).…”

“…The traditional teaching methods were required in the previous time but these are outdated and have no importance in the modern time because now, the dynamics of the market have been changed, and it is the responsibility of the teachers to provide an innovative method of teaching to drill the force material and others in the students to improve their understanding. In America, teachers are applying these methods in the classroom for the students because it is believed that when the method would be applied effectively, the greatest outcome would provide a better opportunity for the students to learn the thing innovatively (Widanta et al, 2019 ; Yao, 2019 ). Therefore, not only the teachers are required to utilize the innovative method for the student, but also it is the responsibility of the student to develop their mindset and adopt all of the new and innovative methods of teaching with a great heart and get the learning material effectively to improve the performance and the standard of education (Hernandez-Olivan et al, 2022 ; Meng and Yang, 2022 ).…”

“…Moreover, the teachers are highly motivated and they have always in a race to innovate the new and emerging methods of teaching for the students, and these teachers are providing critical opportunities to the students for their bad learning (Laletina et al, 2022 ). For the development of the student's performance and the students' learning material, the responsibility of the teacher is to understand the mental state of the student and development of a strategy for the effective application to influence the mental state of the students for providing them the course material (Widanta et al, 2019 ; Sormunen et al, 2020 ). It is important to understand that for the development of the student's performance and the students' learning material, the responsibility of the teacher is to understand the mental state of the student and development of a strategy for the effective application to influence the mental state of the students for providing them the course material in an effective way (Widanta et al, 2019 ; Sormunen et al, 2020 ).…”

The Influence the Language Learning Environment on Negative Transfer and its Connection to Status and Face-Saving Refusal Strategies

“…Direct refusals represent a more face-threatening act than indirect refusals and are found to occur more frequently among Americans when compared with Japanese (Beebe et. al., 1990), Indonesian (Widanta, Hudiananingsih, Sitawati & Ardika, 2019), Javanese (Wijayanto, 2016) and Egyptian-Arabic (Morkus, 2018).…”