A Diagnostic Study Of Interlanguage Written Speech Act Realization At Post-secondary Level: Cross-cultural Perspectives

The study of interlanguage in both ESL and EFL settings has become a growing source of concern in pragmatics as well as SLA within recent three decades. If pragmatics is viewed as the study of people's comprehension and production of linguistic action in context, interlanguage pragmatics has consequently been defined as the study of NNSs'use and acquisition of linguistic action patterns in a L2. Beginning with an extensive review over interlanguage pragmatics study and especially the theories and studies of speech act, the research finds out that little is done to know about how learners acquire the ability to perform speech acts in decontextualized written language. Therefore, a small-scale empirical study is conducted among 76 secondary EFL learners during the last month of grade 2 at Tongling No.3 High School.This empirical study investigates how post-secondary EFL learners realize their speech act, and to what degree they employ convincing devices to make their readers understand the illocutionary force of their written discourses. Specifically, four questions are addressed in this study:1. How can the written speech act of stating an opinion be characterized among nonnatives?2. To what extent does cultural transfer exist in the respondents'realization of written speech act?3. What are the processes that respondents go through in performing such a task?4. What pragmatic effects of IL would be brought about in cross-cultural communication?Data analyzed in this study consisted of 76 student essays of speech act realization of stating an opinion and supporting it. A post-writing introspective questionnaire was designed focusing on the student writers'views about writing process as communication, their language performance about stating an opinion in English, acts of pragmatic transfer and their tendencies about pragmatic instruction. Afterwards, a follow-up retrospective group interview was conducted in order to further confirm respondents'actual reflection. The interlanguage samples were rated and analyzed qualitatively to diagnose the components of the speech act. Additional data on the process went to Microsoft Excel 2003 for computing and thus analyzed to gain retrospective insights into how the respondents approached the task.Corresponding to the research questions, this study has obtained the following findings:(1) There exists a stable structure for stating and then supporting an opinion. There tends to be an expression of the situation first; then there is a brief statement of the opinion. Next, there follows an explanation or justification for the opinion. Certain speech act realization strategies are employed. However, paragraphs are frequently divergent to different directions and not fully developed.(2) Cultural transfer exists in the realization of written speech act at both text and syntactical levels. Regulations or conventions in Chinese discourse modes have been negatively transferred into their English performance. Collective perspective of thinking and neutral or vague attitude, also, are the results of Chinese culture modes. Linguistic use such as independent because-clause, misuse/abuse of person, lack of relative clause, overlapping, lack of linking words founded in this study has its origin from what they do in their first language.(3) Learners at post-secondary level have already had vague and elementary awareness of writing-process-as-communication. However, they are not sure to make themselves understood by NSs. Thus, negative transfer is by far more examined in this study. Simultaneously, they are psychologically not certain about the benefits they get from instructions in Chinese and English classrooms, so they have no confidence of their language performance. On the understanding of pragmatic transfer, most get insights from their first language but they do not think it is successful doing so. On the contrary, some report that they directly organize the essay in the target language and feel satisfied.(4) Sometimes, it seems that opinions were directed for the teacher rather than actual own opinion. Consequently, the illocutionary force of quite a large amount of post-secondary speech act discourses could merely be understood by their native (not the target) interlocutors. This finding is consistent with the previous researches in the field of ILP. Their performances are not at all specific or original. Chinese students at this level almost uniformly express always the same idea in their target language compositions.Finally, this study is of both theoretical and pedagogical values. It has enriched the research in decontextualized written discourse of EFL learners especially in the Chinese environment. It can also shed light on the education reform in TEFL in China's high school, especially in basic L2 writing instruction and revision of curriculum standards and classroom teaching materials.