Chinese EFL Learners' Cross-cultural Pragmatic Competence: The Appropriateness Of Requests

The speech act of request has attracted a lot of attention in recent research,and previous studies reveal that conventionally indirect request strategies are commonly used by second language(L2)learners.This study is relevant because the findings would improve the requests strategies and responses between Chinese students of EFL and foreigners.A speaker generally employs requests regularly,hence this study examines the role of cross-cultural pragmatic competence in Chinese students in learning English as a Foreign Language(EFL)by considering the appropriateness of requests.This study aims to find out the effects of knowledge of L1 culture on L2 pragmatic competence and how requests and its responses would contribute to pragmatic failure.The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze data.The data were collected through a discourse completion test(DCT)from 72 undergraduate and postgraduate students.The modified DCT was composed of two parts.Part one was mainly concerned with the demographic information of the participants and Part Two was composed of 12 simulated situations eliciting the appropriateness of requests in various communication settings.The present study shows that Chinese EFL learners do not differ markedly from native speakers in their use of strategies,but do differ significantly in the formulaic expressions they employ for making the requests.Also,unclear request strategies and responses contribute to pragmatic failures.However,the study recommends that instructors should engage learners of English as a foreign language in a lot of appropriate request strategies to build learners' competence and ability to understand situations in different environments.