"The Language of Requesting --- Raising Foreign Language Learners' Awareness of Pragmatic Appropriateness¡¨

ABSTRACT
For intermediate and advanced language learners, the awareness of pragmatic factors is very crucial for effective communication. This study investigates the strategies Chinese foreign language (CFL) learners used in making a request, the linguistic and pragmatic errors they made, and, from a pedagogical point of view, the importance of raising the foreign language learner's consciousness of pragmatic factors.

Thirty-six native Chinese speakers and twenty Chinese language learners from the Shanghai International Studies University and Fudan University completed a discourse-completion test (DCT). The test contains scripted dialogues in eight socially differentiated situations. Respondents were asked to complete the dialogue by making a request. The answers were analyzed in terms of the request sequence, strategy types, and pragmatic appropriateness considering the situation and social parameters. Three major components of a request sequence were identified: the alerters, preposed or postposed supportive moves, and the request proper, or the Head Act. There are three levels of strategy types: direct strategy, conventionally indirect strategy, and nonconventionally indirect strategy. Comparisons between the two groups on strategy selection and sequence formation were discussed. The results indicated that foreign language learners made many types of modification while making a request: interrogative or conditional structures, negation, tense and politeness markers, hedgers, subjectivizers, etc. In addition, the results showed that foreign language learners are lacking several fundamental skills necessary to make culturally appropriate requests: they used fewer strategies than native speakers did, and situational as well as social difference was not adequately reflected in their answers. Results of this study suggest that cross-cultural pragmatic analysis should form an integral part of language instruction at certain proficiency levels.