The Effectiveness of Teaching Formulaic Politeness Strategies in Making Request to Undergraduates in an ESL Classroom

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that the main thrust of second language (L2) teaching and learning is establishing and developing the communicative competence of learners. Especially, in recent years, the focus has shifted more towards intercultural communicative competence (ICC). As such, it is more practical that educational endeavors should be directed both towards the grammar or lexis of the target language as well as the appropriate use of these grammatical and lexical systems in a variety of situations by considering different social and contextual factors. Therefore, this study embarks on the effect of explicit instruction of formulaic politeness strategies among Malaysian undergraduates in making request. Sixty Malaysian undergraduates participated in the study. The students included two groups of intervention and control groups. The data were cumulated through three tests, namely open ended completion test, a listening test and an acceptability judgment test. Treatment or experimental group received explicit instruction with structured and problem-solving and input tasks. The comparison was made between the performance of treatment group and that of control in terms of the pre-test and post-test. The findings show that the treatment group outperformed significantly than the control group. This matter is suggestive that in this probe, explicit form-based instruction was successful for learners to comprehend and produce the English politeness strategies effectively in making request. The findings of this study will be beneficial for material developers and teachers to make use of form-focused strategies more effectively to teach second language pragmatic features to Malaysian students.

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“…This is beacuse the position of their social-societal is lower than their teachers. However, there also found phenomena when the Elementary School and Secondary School students are asking to their teachers at school or their parents at home, the speech acts frequently seem become commanding, pushing, or even forcing (Prayitno, Ngalim, Rohmadi, & Riyanto, 2018;Tan & Farashaiyan, 2012;Farisi, 2015).…”

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“…This strategy is important to be used as character education for children to their teachers. A positive politeness strategy that stems from an internal urge that respecting others is an awareness (Healy, 2018; K. H. Tan & Farashaiyan, 2012). Illustration of the complete discussion is given through the following discussion.…”

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“…Secondly, through politeness strategy, establishing respectful relationship between teachers and students will be much easier. Establishing the essential circumstances to promote pragmatic competence of learners is suggested in second language environments [7]. Thus, by creating such a good atmosphere where there is not such bad thing, like a high pressure, will make the learner feels like they are being respected and trusted.…”