Does Grammatical Accuracy Affect Request Strategy Use?

Abstract

The present study was aimed at examining whether grammatical accuracy was a significant predictor of use of request strategy (direct or indirect) in second language performance. Participants were 39 seventh semester students (29 males and 10 females) majoring in International Business Management at one public higher education institution in Bali. Their English proficiency levels ranged from pre-intermediate to intermediate. The participants were asked to write an e-mail based on a situation carefully designed so as to necessitate the use of indirect strategy. Grammatical accuracy was operationalized as average score per T-unit. The head act of each request was coded as either direct or indirect. Binary logistic regression was conducted on the data with significance level being set at p < .05. The result revealed that grammatical accuracy was not a significant predictor of request strategy use (Wald = 0.00, df = 1, p = 0.96). This result indicates that the odds for using indirect strategy are similar regardless of level of levels of grammatical accuracy.