Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers

Speech act of complaint is one of the face threatening acts (FTA). In Malaysian Polytechnic syllabus, one of the skills tested in English course is on the speech act of complaint. Teachers realize that students have difficulties when performing the act of complaint based on the assessment given to t...

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Main Author:	Wan Samiun, Wan Sukartini
Format:	Thesis
Language:	English
Published:	2014
Subjects:	L Education (General)
Online Access:	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/78421/1/WanSukartiniWanSamiunMFP20141.pdf
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id	my-utm-ep.78421
record_format	uketd_dc
spelling	my-utm-ep.784212018-08-26T11:54:53Z Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers 2014-01 Wan Samiun, Wan Sukartini L Education (General) Speech act of complaint is one of the face threatening acts (FTA). In Malaysian Polytechnic syllabus, one of the skills tested in English course is on the speech act of complaint. Teachers realize that students have difficulties when performing the act of complaint based on the assessment given to them in their English class. The study of the speech act of complaints has been done by many researchers, however, in Malaysian context they are very limited studies among low English proficiency speakers. The study aims to investigate the complaint strategies employed by low English proficiency speakers (both male and female) as well as the politeness strategies adopted by using the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987). 80 Malay Polytechnic students equally both male and female respondents were selected to be the respondents. The instrument used was Discourse Completion Test (DCT) containing five different scenarios of making complaints ranging from different level of power differences. The students’ responses on complaints scenarios were then coded in terms of seven major categories: expression of annoyance, interrogation, explicit complaint, accusation, justification and request for repair. The result indicated that the highest number of frequency for complaint strategies employed by low proficiency speakers is request for repair and the least was expression of annoyance. Generally, low English proficiency speakers seemed to adopt negative politeness and the study identified that there was no significant difference between male and female in their preference of complaints strategies and politeness strategies. Due to the limited English proficiency of the speakers, this study found that learners were not able to make appropriate complaints. Low English proficiency speakers preferred to initiate complaints explicitly regardless of different power relation. The study has its implication towards teaching speech acts where exposure should be given to the learners in terms of phrases and clauses in a variety of complaint scenarios depending on the different power relation in order to help learners to make an appropriate complaint in the target language. 2014-01 Thesis http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/78421/ http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/78421/1/WanSukartiniWanSamiunMFP20141.pdf application/pdf en public http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:79391 masters Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Education Faculty of Education
institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
collection	UTM Institutional Repository
language	English
topic	L Education (General)
spellingShingle	L Education (General) Wan Samiun, Wan Sukartini Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers
description	Speech act of complaint is one of the face threatening acts (FTA). In Malaysian Polytechnic syllabus, one of the skills tested in English course is on the speech act of complaint. Teachers realize that students have difficulties when performing the act of complaint based on the assessment given to them in their English class. The study of the speech act of complaints has been done by many researchers, however, in Malaysian context they are very limited studies among low English proficiency speakers. The study aims to investigate the complaint strategies employed by low English proficiency speakers (both male and female) as well as the politeness strategies adopted by using the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987). 80 Malay Polytechnic students equally both male and female respondents were selected to be the respondents. The instrument used was Discourse Completion Test (DCT) containing five different scenarios of making complaints ranging from different level of power differences. The students’ responses on complaints scenarios were then coded in terms of seven major categories: expression of annoyance, interrogation, explicit complaint, accusation, justification and request for repair. The result indicated that the highest number of frequency for complaint strategies employed by low proficiency speakers is request for repair and the least was expression of annoyance. Generally, low English proficiency speakers seemed to adopt negative politeness and the study identified that there was no significant difference between male and female in their preference of complaints strategies and politeness strategies. Due to the limited English proficiency of the speakers, this study found that learners were not able to make appropriate complaints. Low English proficiency speakers preferred to initiate complaints explicitly regardless of different power relation. The study has its implication towards teaching speech acts where exposure should be given to the learners in terms of phrases and clauses in a variety of complaint scenarios depending on the different power relation in order to help learners to make an appropriate complaint in the target language.
format	Thesis
qualification_level	Master's degree
author	Wan Samiun, Wan Sukartini
author_facet	Wan Samiun, Wan Sukartini
author_sort	Wan Samiun, Wan Sukartini
title	Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers
title_short	Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers
title_full	Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers
title_fullStr	Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers
title_full_unstemmed	Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers
title_sort	speech act of complaints among low english proficiency speakers
granting_institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Education
granting_department	Faculty of Education
publishDate	2014
url	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/78421/1/WanSukartiniWanSamiunMFP20141.pdf
_version_	1747817984888406016

Speech act of complaints among low English proficiency speakers

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