A Study on Politeness Strategies in the Conversations of the Course Book “Topnotch 2” Pre-intermediate (the First Edition)

A Study on Politeness Strategies in the
Conversations of the Course Book “Topnotch 2”
Pre-intermediate (the First Edition)

Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền


Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Dr. Đỗ Thị Thanh Hà
Năm bảo vệ: 2013


Keywords: Hội thoại; Giao tiếp; Tiếng Anh

Content
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Language, generally speaking, is created as a necessary demand of human life with the
crucial aim of communication. Since different people from different cultural and social
backgrounds may have different ways to exchange information and express their attitudes and
opinions, the question of how to successfully communicate in certain contexts, especially in
cross-cultural communication has attracted great attention from linguists and has been widely
discussed so far. It is commonly believed that understanding social conventions and paying
attention to such concepts as politeness and face will definitely allow us to have better
comprehension of a variety of speaking ways by people from different cultures, thus helping
eliminate ethnic stereotypes and misunderstandings. As claimed by Celce-Murcia and Olshtain
(2000), “when learning a second language, one needs to acquire the new culture politeness
framework, which is very different from that of one‟s own culture”. Obviously, students‟ master
of the cultural knowledge in general and strategies to choose the language politely in particular is
supposed to make a valuable contribution to their ability to well communicate with confidence in

any English speaking environment. With such great importance to language competence and
communication skill, politeness strategies are strongly recommended to be included in the course
designs for teaching and learning English as a second language in universities and schools.
Among popular course books for English learners, Top Notch series (with Summit), as
claimed by Pearson Longman, is an award-winning six-level communicative course for adults
and young adults. This course book series have also been used and evaluated by a number of
ESL institutes and teachers in the world. Eslami, Esmaeli, Ghavaminia, and Rajabi (2010)
chosed to evaluate the four mostly instructed courses in Iran English language institutes
namelyTop Notch, Interchange, Headway, and On Your Markbased on Mcdounough and Shaw‟s
(2003) division of course book evaluation into internal and external evaluation. After a thorough
examination, the researchers came to the conclusion that“Top Notch best meets Mcdounough
and Shaw‟s (2003) evaluation criteria”.According to the result of the study by Alemi and
Mesbah (2013), the Top Notch series offered certain benefits to language learners such as
“encouraging thestudents to communicate successfully by giving them lots of opportunities for
interaction, and demonstrating cultural-based aspects not only through lively and authentic
visual images but also without cultural bias” (Alemi&Mesbah, 2013-162).Frommy and my
colleagues ‟personal experiences as English lecturers who have been making use of these books
as text books in the official English teaching program for students at FPT university for nearly
four years, we has got deeply interested in their effective communicative approach with the main
focus on natural and authentic communication, the promotion of integrated language- skills
practice as well as the inclusion of topical themes in interactive conversations. In order to make
better and more effective use of this course book series in teaching, the author of the present
study has had strong desire for chances of conducting anin-depth study on these books‟
communicative approach.
All the aforementioned reasons have encouraged the researcher to work on this study
with the objectives of gaining insights into the positive and negative politeness strategies in the
conversations of the course book “Top Notch 2” by Joan M. Saslow and Allen Ascher -the third
book in the Top Notch and Summit series introduced above.
2. Aims of the study
Firstly, the study is aimed to investigate the politeness strategies utilized in the

conversations of the course book selected. The second aim the study expected to achieve is to
provide teachers with some suggestions for the effective teaching of polite strategies in the book
“Top Notch 2” (the first edition).

3. Objectives of the study
In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, the objectives are specified as follows:
- Identifying and analyzing positive strategies employed in the conversations of “Top
Notch 2” (the first edition).
- Identifying and analyzing negative politeness strategies employed in the conversations of
“Top Notch 2” (the first edition).
- Offering possible implications for teaching positive and negative strategies in an effective
and efficient way with specific exercises related to the content of the course book.
4. Scope of the study
Politeness strategies which can be presented through verbal and nonverbal behaviors also
can be expressed in different ways by different linguists. The research is conducted with no
ambition to study politeness strategies with various approaches but it is mainly based on Brown
and Levinson‟s theoretical framework. The focus of this study is limited to investigating only the
positive and negative politeness strategies in the conversation of “Top Notch 2” (the first
condition) without paying much attention to the nonverbal ones.
5. Significance of the study
Once having been completed, this study would give decent benefits. With respect to
English communication teaching, the study is supposed to serve as noteworthy reference for
creating the suitable methods for teaching politeness strategies in the course book “Top Notch
2”.As for English learner of this course book, the research hopefully help not only raise the
students‟ awareness of the importance of politeness strategies in cross-cultural communication in
general but also provide them with specific knowledge of politesse strategies accompanied with
their typical words and expressions used in the course book‟s conversation as well as related
exercises and activities for their learning and practising in particular.
6. Design of the study report
Part A: Introduction- presents the rationale, aims, objectives, scope,

methods,significance and design of the study.
Part B: Development- consists of three chapters as follows:
Chapter 1: Theoretical background- lays the theoretical foundation for the research.
Chapter 2: Methodology-details the methods that have been used and the procedures that have
been followed by the researcher.
Chapter 3: Findings and discussion – reports the study‟s finding on which further discussion is
offered
Part C: Conclusion: ends the study by summarizing its main points as well as finding
out the limitation and suggestions for the further studies
The following parts are references and appendix .

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