This study investigates the use of English refusal strategies to examine if there are any similarities and differences between American and Korean university students. It also focuses on whether there are any differences in the production of English r... This study investigates the use of English refusal strategies to examine if there are any similarities and differences between American and Korean university students. It also focuses on whether there are any differences in the production of English refusal strategies between a university group and a pre-university group in Korean EFL contexts. For this purpose, 100 American English native speakers and 178 Korean university students participated. The Korean students were divided into two groups: (a) 78 pre-university students who completed high school curricula; (b) 100 university students majoring in English. This division was intended to measure whether the education levels of the Korean students would influence their choice of English refusal strategies. The research tool employed in this study was a discourse completion task (DCT). The DCT consisted of 12 items which involved the production of refusal strategies according to social status (higher, equal and lower social status) and communicative functions (request, invitation, offer, and suggestion). The DCT had two versions: (a) the English version for the American groups and the Korean groups; (b) the Korean version for Korean students to examine L1 pragmatic transfer. The participants were asked to complete hypothetical dialogues in the given situations. The results of the quantitative study showed that, while the Korean students and Americans showed some similarities, cross-cultural variations were evident in the choice of refusal strategies. The general distribution of refusal strategies demonstrated that the Korean students tended to use indirect strategies more frequently than the native English speakers. With respect to the use of refusals according to communicative functions, the American group and the Korean university group tended to use more indirect refusals for requests and more direct refusals for invitations and suggestions than when they refuse for other communicative functions. Both Korean university students and Americans showed a similar degree of directness and indirectness in their refusal to requests, but the Korean university students used more adjuncts when refusing invitations than the Americans. As for their refusals to offers, the Korean students tended to choose more indirect strategies than the American group. A similar tendency was evident even when the Korean students were divided into the pre-university and university groups. The pre-university group tended to use direct refusal strategies slightly more than the other two groups while the Americans used more indirect refusal strategies when refusing suggestions. With regard to social status or age, the Korean students showed more direct and indirect strategies when speaking to an equal, but they used less direct and indirect refusal strategies to a higher-status interlocutor with more reliance on adjuncts than other status interlocutor. However, the Americans used more direct strategies when speaking to a lower status interlocutor and used more indirect strategies when speaking to an equal than other status interlocutor. These results were consistent for both Korean university and pre-university groups. In addition, both Korean groups showed a high frequency of regret/apology and negative consequences strategies. Another noticeable finding is that the pre-university students showed heavier reliance on L1 pragmatic transfer than the university students, which suggests that the learners’ educations levels influenced pragmatic transfer. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis showed that the most serious pragmatic failure occurred due to L1 transfer, that is, direct translation of Korean refusal expressions into English. Other types of pragmatic failures involved the choice of impolite refusing strategies, the failure to choose strategies according to register, wrong choice of communicative functions in the given situations, wrong choice of lexical items for refusing strategies, total communication breakdown, vagueness, and pragmatic failure due to lack of cultural knowledge. On the basis of these findings, six steps of suggestions were made to teach refusing strategies more effectively. The first step is a diagnostic assessment, which aims to examine the students’ general awareness of refusal speech acts. The second step is the presentation of model dialogues, which aims to raise the students’ awareness of sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic rules. At the subsequent stage, teachers need to teach the learners authentic refusal strategies. The fourth step is an evaluation stage, which aims to raise students’ awareness of various social factors such as social status and age. At the last stage, emphasis is placed on production using role play. In other words, the students need to perform role play activities using different situations. In this case, it is important for the teacher to give appropriate feedback and discuss students’ actual performance. This study yielded many interesting findings, especially from the qualitative analysis. They will help teachers further understand different features of Korean EFL students’ refusal strategies. They will also help teachers figure out what should be emphasized in their teaching of communicative functions in the Korean EFL context. Such efforts will eventually contribute to students’ development of pragmatic competence, which in turn enhances their communicative competence.
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