Making Requests By Chinese Efl Learners

Requests, a speech act people frequently use to perform everyday social interactions, have attracted particular attention in politeness theories, pragmatics, and second language acquisition. This book looks at request behaviours in a significant EFL population – Chinese-speaking learners of English. It will draw on recent literature, such as politeness theories and cognitive models for interlanguage pragmatics development, as well as placing special emphasis on situational context and formulaic language to provide a more fine-grained investigation. A range of request scenarios has been specifically designed for this project, from common service encounters to highly face-threatening situations such as borrowing money and asking a favour of police officer. Our findings on Chinese-style pragmatic behaviours and patterns of pragmatic development will be of value to cross-cultural pragmatics researchers, TESOL professionals, and university students with an interest in this area of study.

This book contributes to the literature of interlanguage pragmatics by building an interface between researching and teaching speech acts in the Chinese context. It is written for researchers, language educators, classroom teachers and readers who are interested in interlanguage pragmatics research, acquisition and teaching, with particular reference to speech acts performed by Chinese learners of English, and their relationships with the learners’ first language and cultural concepts. It provides a more advanced understanding of the production and development of speech acts of Chinese learners of English from the cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, L1 and L2 developmental perspectives, drawing on relevant second language acquisition theoretical frameworks. It also recommends research-informed pedagogies that are applicable to other learners of English.

This edited volume makes a valuable contribution to the burgeoning research field of English as a lingua franca. In a pioneering step, the collection is exclusively devoted to the English email discourse of Chinese speakers. The studies address innovative topics related to various contexts and relationships, using several different approaches and theories, which taken together shed light on how English serves as a lingua franca in multiple types of global written communication. The research topics presented are organized into four thematic sections, including emails from students to professors, emails from students to the international academic community, emails from peer to peer, and emails at the workplace. This collection of empirical research invites readers to consider the special features of apologies, requests, terms of address, politeness, and discourse organization, and how cultural differences may affect the use or interpretation of each. Throughout the book, readers will also discover how Chinese speakers use special features and strategies to construct their identity, establish relationships, and achieve successful communication in English. This highly informative, thought-provoking book also provides insights on methods for teaching email discourse using English as a lingua franca and suggests directions for future research.

This volume examines the second language pragmatic development of international learners of English inside and outside the classroom.

Email has become a ubiquitous medium of communication. It is used amongst people from the same speech community, but also between people from different language and cultural backgrounds. When people communicate, they tend to follow rules of speaking in their native language, termed by scholars as pragmatic transfer, which may cause misunderstandings and lead to cross-cultural communication breakdown. This book examines pragmatic transfer by Chinese learners of English at different proficiency levels when writing email requests and refusals. To meet the need for developmental research in L2 pragmatics, it also explores whether pragmatic transfer increases or decreases as language proficiency improves. This book will appeal to researchers and students in interlanguage and intercultural pragmatics, second language acquisition, English as a second/foreign language, and intercultural communication.

This book brings together a collection of high-quality empirical studies which examine multiple aspects involved in the acquisition, teaching and assessment of pragmatics in Chinese as a second language (L2). The studies collectively address some of the most cutting-edge issues in the field of L2 pragmatics, such as the acquisition of key pragmatic features, methodological innovations in pragmatics assessment, individual difference factors and virtual learning contexts. The majority of the chapters include detailed descriptions of the instruments used and additional material in the appendices, making it a truly valuable collection for researchers and students alike. Furthermore, the publication includes the most comprehensive, state-of-the-art review of empirical research in L2 Chinese pragmatics published bilingually (in English and Chinese) between 1995 and 2022, along with a supplemental annotated bibliography. While the empirical studies all focus on Chinese as the target language, the issues they address have implications for L2 pragmatics research in general and this book will appeal to those interested in the latest developments in the field.

This book examines pragmatic transfer by Chinese learners of English at different proficiency levels when writing email requests and refusals.