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Refusals in Instructional Contexts and Beyond PDF

257 Pages·2013·2.167 MB·Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication
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Refusals in instructional contexts and beyond Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication 25 Series Editors Wolfgang Herrlitz Paul van den Hoven Refusals in instructional contexts and beyond Edited by Otilia Martí-Arnándiz and Patricia Salazar-Campillo Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013 Cover photo: www.dreamstime.com The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3715-1 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0971-7 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2013 Printed in The Netherlands Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction Otilia Martí-Arnándiz and Patricia Salazar-Campillo 1 Section I. Enhancing refusals in formal settings Using TV series as input source of refusals in the classroom Ana B. Fernández-Guerra 5 Refusing in Second Life Elina Vilar-Beltrán and Sabela Melchor-Couto 23 The effect of instruction on learners’ use and negotiation of refusals Eva Alcón-Soler and Josep R. Guzman i Pitarch 41 Effects of metapragmatic instruction on EFL learners’ production of refusals Esther Usó-Juan 65 Section II. Variables affecting use of refusals Refusals in L2 English: Proficiency effects on appropriateness and fluency Naoko Taguchi 101 The role of proficiency in the production of refusals in English in an instructed context Victòria Codina-Espurz 121 Refusing in L2 Spanish: The effects of the context of learning during a short-term study abroad program César Félix-Brasdefer 147 Section III. Investigating learners’ production of refusals Learners’ production of refusals: Interactive written DCT versus oral role-play Alicia Martínez-Flor 175 Research method effects on third language learners’ refusals Maria-Pilar Safont-Jordà and Laura Portolés-Falomir 213 Production of refusals: Insights from stimulated recall Patricia Salazar-Campillo 235 Notes on contributors 251 Acknowledgements First and foremost, we would like to thank all contributors in the volume for accepting to take part in this project. We are also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers of preliminary versions of the chapters for their comments and thoughtful suggestions. We would like to state that parts of the volume and some studies included in it have been conducted within the framework of a research project funded by (a) the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (FFI2008-05241/FILO) and (b) Fundació Universitat Jaume I and Caixa Castelló-Bancaixa (P1.1B2011-15). Introduction1 Otilia Martí-Arnándiz (Universitat Jaume I) Patricia Salazar-Campillo (Universitat Jaume I) This volume arises out of the need for empirical investigation on one under- research issue in speech acts studies, that of refusals. Refusals are inherently face-threatening acts and require a high level of pragmatic competence so as not to risk the interlocutor’s face. Moreover, if refusals are produced by non- native speakers, the possibility of sounding impolite or abrupt is evident due to their limited pragmatic competence. Taking these insights into consideration, the present work aims at opening new venues of investigation on refusals and at contributing to scholarly discussion. Previous volumes on this speech act have mainly focused on their comparison in different cultures (for example, Lyuh’s (1992) between Korean and American; Gass and Houck’s (1999) cross-cultural study of Japanese-English or Félix-Brasdefer’s (2008) study of refusals in Mexico and the U.S.). However, this book explores refusals from a more applied perspective, which may have an effect on pedagogical applications in foreign language instructional contexts. The present volume includes ten chapters which are divided into three different parts: the four chapters in Part I focus on ways to enhance refusals in formal settings; thus contexts such as the English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) classroom and virtual platforms used for pedagogical purposes are presented. The three chapters in Part II attempt to shed light on the production of refusals by examining some variables such as proficiency and study-abroad programs. Finally, in Part III we find three chapters which investigate learners’ production of refusals taking into account the impact of different data collection methods on subsequent analysis of refusals and the insights from stimulated recall methodology in order to widen the scope and further our understanding of refusal behavior. The book opens with Ana B. Fernández-Guerra’s study which compares refusals in TV series and in naturally occurring discourse taken from different spoken corpora. Her main aim is to ascertain if the former may serve as input source of refusals in formal settings. The analysis of the results demonstrates that refusal behavior is rather similar in both databases, except 1 As members of the LAELA (Lingüística Aplicada a l’Ensenyament de la Llengua Anglesa) research group at Universitat Jaume I (Castellón, Spain), we would like to acknowledge that this study is part of a research project funded by (a) the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (FFI2008-05241/FILO), (b) Fundació Universitat Jaume I and Caixa Castelló-Bancaixa (P1.1B2011-15). 2 Otilia Martí-Arnándiz and Patricia Salazar-Campillo for direct and avoidance refusals, which were more frequent in the TV series. As for adjuncts to mitigate refusals, there is a greater amount in natural discourse than in the episodes. Taking these findings into account, Fernández-Guerra considers the use of video in the classroom beneficial as foreign language learners can be exposed to authentic input which, in turn, may enhance their pragmatic competence. The chapter written by Elina Vilar and Sabela Melchor-Couto takes into consideration the impact of stay-abroad periods on learners’ use of refusal strategies by two groups of learners of Spanish in the UK: second year (SY) students who had never been to the target language country and final year (FY) students who had already spent their compulsory year abroad in Spain. In the digital era we are immersed in the authors employ the virtual world Second Life to offer a context for their students’ interaction and production of refusals. Although both groups obtained similar scores in pre- and post- refusal strategies, the FY students were shown to be more indirect and used more negotiation strategies. Moreover, Second Life appears to be an effective tool to collect data on refusals and to provide students with further digital literacy. Taking as a point of departure the under-research discourse level for the teaching of speech acts, Eva Alcón and Josep R. Guzman’s chapter aims at checking two hypotheses: 1) whether instruction will make a difference in the use of refusal strategies an 2) whether instruction will influence learners’ negotiation of such speech acts. The four-step pedagogical proposal for teaching refusals Alcón suggests consists of first, identifying refusals in interaction; second, explaining the speech act sets; third, noticing and understanding refusal sequences and fourth, negotiating learners’ use of refusals. The study followed a pretest-instruction-posttest design and the results related to the Hypothesis 1 demonstrate that before instruction, learners resorted to direct and avoidance strategies. This trend changes towards a greater use of indirect refusals in the posttest. Alcón’s second hypothesis is qualitatively analyzed from a discourse perspective which shows the learners’ attempts to accommodate the non-compliant nature of refusals over extended negotiations. In the last chapter of this first part, Esther Usó-Juan addresses the effects of explicit instruction on refusals. The pedagogical intervention her university students followed one week after the pre-test was made up of a six-step sequence (Researching, Reflecting, Receiving, Reasoning, Rehearsing and Revising). Both in the pre- and the post-test the students carried out a written DCT as data-collection tool, showing that after the instructional intervention, a greater and wider variety of refusal strategies were employed. In light of these findings, Usó-Juan argues that the use of an explicit instructional framework which includes not only awareness raising but also production activities may be beneficial for enhancing appropriate use of refusals.

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