VIETNAMESE EFL LEARNERS' USE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH CLASSROOMS AT DONG NAI TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Politeness strategies serve to not only construct, sustain, and cultivate positive relationships but also to portray the speaker's social face and social behavior. Moreover, they signify the position and knowledge of the speaker in society. Ultimately, their overarching goal is to enhance the relationship between the speaker and the listener, fostering mutual respect in all communication scenarios. The aim of this paper is to measure the politeness strategies in request-making of Dong Nai Technology University students who are majors in English language to assess their perception of how to express politeness. The research employed a mixed-methods approach, enabling a thorough exploration of the politeness strategies used by the students majoring in English to make requests for their lecturers and classmates. The results show that most of them are aware of politeness strategies in request-making, and they use them rather well in real situations, but they can not use a variety of utterances and distinguish some differences between functions and their meaning due to a lack of language competence.