Request Strategies Used by International Students in English as a Lingua Franca Context

Abstract

This study explored the permeating strategies used by the international student in request acts and the common features appearing during the language use as international students in Indonesia, where English is used as a Lingua Franca. The study employed a set of Oral Discourse Completion Test (ODCT) to collect the data from eight international students. Ten ODCTs were composed based on the relative power, social distance, and imposition and were analysed based on the Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP). The result was presented in descriptive qualitative where the most frequently used strategies were conventionally indirect – suggestory formulae. Meanwhile, the content analysis indicated that address terms and lengthy reasonings were the most common features appearing in the request acts made. The results offer that interlanguage pragmatic in lingua franca context occurs smoothly as the international students can combine the local culture in their language use.

Iranian EFL Learners’ Production of Online English Requests: Effects of Technology-Mediated Task-Based Instruction

“…The act of request is often considered the most challenging part of interlanguage pragmatics as requesting involves imposing on the hearer for the speaker's benefit, potentially a face-threatening act (Pinto & Raschio, 2007). As politeness and linguistics components vary between cultures, it is typical for EFL learners to produce improper request speech acts in the target context (Situmorang, 2022). Although different techniques have been applied to boost EFL learners' pragmatic competence and proper request speech act production, the problem of making an appropriate request still exists (Alerwi & Alzahrani, 2020).…”

“…It has limitations and might make teaching speech acts more difficult for teachers. In such a context where technology has come to play a prominent role in the area of language teaching and learning (Akbari &Pishghadam, 2022), further studies are required to scrutinize the impact of more practical techniques on teaching pragmatic norms in general and speech acts in particular in technology-mediated spaces (Situmorang, 2022). In this regard, the current study aimed at bridging this gap by investigating the impact of technology-mediated TBLT in an online collaborative and individual EFL learning environment on the development of EFL learners' pragmatic competence and request speech act production.…”