The Effects of Utilizing Language Learning Strategies in Teaching the Speech Act of Refusal

This study examines the effects of strategies-based instruction on the refusal productions measuring the appropriateness using pre-test and post-test design. The aim of the study is to validate the strategies for speech acts acquisition suggested by Cohen (2005). The twenty Korean EFL learners with homogeneous level of English proficiency in undergraduate course participated in this study. The participants were given three instructional treatments which were modeled after taxonomy of strategies for speech act acquisition by Cohen (2005), namely, (1) strategies for the initial learning of speech acts, (2) strategies for using the speech act material and (3) metapragmatic considerations. Pre-test and post-test were administered a week before and after the teaching sessions to illustrate refusals with consideration of the social status between speaker and hearer. With collected refusal responses, two raters evaluated appropriateness of refusals according to a previously developed evaluation rubric (Taguchi, 2006). Based on the data from the refusal appropriateness evaluation score of the participants, a paired sample t-test was implemented in order to measure the effects resulted by three teaching sessions. The results demonstrate that there was a positive effect on the refusal appropriateness as the mean scores were positively increased in all three various social statuses.