Students’ L2 Refusal Appropriateness and Accuracy

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating refusal strategies performed by foreign learners of Indonesian language. Specifically, it was focused on researching strategies of refusal used by the participant, emerging frequency of each strategies, as well as appropriateness and accuracy of each strategy used. Sixty students majoring in Tourism were involved in the project. Discourse completion task (DCT) containing an invitation using three sociocultural aspects of low power (-P), low distance (-D), and low rank of imposition (-R) was used to elicit participants’ refusal strategies. Taxonomy of refusal proposed by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (1990) was applied to recognize refusal strategies used by participants. Result of the study revealed that there were three strategies of ‘direct, indirect, and adjunct to refusal’ used by participants in responding the invitation. However, two new sub-strategies found to enrich indirect strategies, they are ‘alternative (change subject)’ and ‘telling wish’. Dealing with participants’ appropriateness and accuracy, it could be concluded that their appropriateness in producing semantic formulas were higher than their accuracy (96,55% and 40,83%) respectively. In addition, there were two contradictive propositions finally underscored upon analysis of appropriateness and accuracy. In term of appropriateness, it is implied that L2 proficiency does not guarantee learners’ high appropriateness, which is in contrast with the Cordina-Espurz’s (2013) finding. However, in term of accuracy, it implied that the lower learners’ L2 proficiency is the lower accuracy level they are in, which is in line with Cordina-Espurz’s (2013) finding.