The Refusal Strategies Employed by Pre-Service Efl Teachers: A Comparison Between Javanese and Sumatrans

Abstract

Refusing is a part of commissive speech acts. Refusing is a face-threatening act (FTA) that needs a good pragmatic competence since it probably gives risk to the interlocutor's positive or negative face. However, it indicates that people from various cultural backgrounds employ dissimilar refusal strategies. This study aimed at providing a comparison of refusal strategies used between Javanese Pre-service English Teachers (JPETs) and Sumatranese Pre-service English Teachers (SPETs) in accordance with different levels of power. The data were elicited from the DCT given to 10 JPETs and 10 SPETs. The participants were asked to fill the DCTs with written responses in which each DCT described different contexts and settings. Based on the analysis, JPETs and SPETs employed similar strategies in refusing to a request. The difference was only on the frequency usage of a certain strategy. Furthermore, all of the indirect strategies were applied to refuse a request meanwhile only a strategy comes from a direct strategy called the negation of proposition that is applied. A direct refusal strategy call bluntness was not applied. This study evoked pre-service awareness of pragmatic competence which could be taught to their future students and larger participants were encouraged for future study.

Female EFL Preservice Teachers Speech Acts Used in Classroom Interaction

“…With their status as preservice teachers, some students do not care about FEPT when teaching. This finding aligned with previous research stating that EFL preservice teachers have weak power (Dewi et al, 2020). Then other opinions state that directive speech acts are helpful for interaction between teachers and students to make them more communicative.…”

“…In terms of theoretical implications, this research complemented previous studies regarding using non-directive speech by EFL preservice teachers. This research complements previous literature on the use of directive speech acts by EFL preservice teachers by providing new empirical knowledge regarding the influence of gender in the use of directive speech acts (Dewi et al, 2020;Zahra et al, 2023). The existence of a comprehensive understanding related to the use of directive speech acts can help the teaching and learning process to be better.…”

Strategies in Forming the Speech Act of Refusals of Non-Native English Speakers and Native English Speakers in Entry-Level Customer Service Positions in Canada

“…Some studies (e.g. Aliakbari & Changizi, 2012;Delen & Tavil, 2010;) have used the discourse completion tasks scenarios from the seminal Beebe, et al (1990) study on refusals, while other researchers modified those DCTs (e.g., Allami & Naeimi, 2011;Chen, 1996;Shirinbakhsh, Rasekh, & Tavakoli, 2018) and others (e.g., Bella, 2014;Dewi, Aniq, & Anisa, 2020;Félix-Brasdefer, 2004;Salazar-Campillo, 2013) designed new scenarios to meet the needs of their study or to reflect actual scenarios relevant to the participants. No studies known to the researcher were conducted in a Canadian entrylevel customer service setting (the focus of the current study), thus six new scenarios were created to fit that context.…”