An american and vietnamese cross-cultural study on teachers’ criticisms to students’ presentations

an american and vietnamese cross-cultural
study on teachers’ criticisms to students’
presentations



Vũ Thùy Linh


Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành:English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Assoc. Prof. Võ Đại Quang(PhD)
Năm bảo vệ: 2009


Abstract: Criticizing is considered one of the face-damaging acts and the speech act of
criticism remains to be an area less explored by scholars at home and abroad. The fact that
criticism plays a very important in teaching and learning is undeniable. This is because
students may learn from mistakes of one another as well as from the comments that they
receive. The two above reasons has encouraged us to conduct the study which aims to make a
comparison in the ways of criticizing students’ presentations between American and
Vietnamese teachers. The present study was conducted the participants of the two groups: 30
American teachers (11 males and 19 females) and 38 Vietnamese teachers (17 males and 21
females). In the research, two main findings were discussed. Firstly, for politeness strategies
are employed by American and Vietnamese teachers, both of them employed variety of direct
and indirect strategies. Secondly, in terms of directness and indirectness degree, Vietnamese
people are inclined to be less direct than American in theory but when criticizing their
students’ presentation, they appeared to be more direct than their counterparts in some
situations such as when their students strayed from the topic and their presentations were not
well-organized. In other situation, American teachers used more direct strategies than
Vietnamese ones. However, it should be noted that these findings are just tentative, not

conclusive affirmation of the directness and indirectness used by American and Vietnamese
teachers.

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Giao văn hóa; Thuyết trình.

Content:





iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABSTRACT


i
ii
iii
Part I: Introduction
1
1. Rationale of the Study
1
2. Aims of the Study
1
3. Scope of the Study
2
4. Methodology

2
5. Design of the Study
2
Part II: Development
4
Chapter 1: Literature Review
4
1.1. Speech acts
4
1.2. Speech act of criticizing
6
1.3. Directness and Indirectness
8
1.3.1 Directness and Indirectness in Language
8
1.3.2 Directness and Indirectness in Culture
10
1.4. Oral Presentation
12
1.4.1 Definition of Presentation
12
1.4.2 Class Presentation Assessment Criteria
12
Chapter 2: The Study
15
2.1 Comments on Participants and Questionnaires
15
2.2 Data collection procedure
17
2.3 Data coding

17
Chapter 3: Results and Discussion
20
3.1 Criticizing strategies used by American and Vietnamese teachers
20
3.1.1 Direct criticisms
20
a. Negative evaluation
20
b. Disapproval
21
c. Identification of problem
22

v
d. Consequences
23
3.1.2 Indirect criticisms
24
a. Demand for change
24
b. Indicating standard
25
c. Request for change
25
d. Advice for change
26
e. Suggestion for change
27
f. Asking/ Presupposing

28
3.2 Similarities and differences in using direct and indirect strategies
29
Part III: Conclusion
36
Appendix
I



1
PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. RATIONALE
The past decade has witnessed the rapid development of pragmatics and growing
attention on speech acts such as apology, request, and compliment. However, the speech
act of criticism remains to be an area less explored by scholars at home and abroad.
According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 62), criticism is a face-threatening act
that threatens the hearer’s positive face, which is “the want of every individual that his
wants be desirable to at least some others”. Therefore, the speaker tends to adopt various
strategies to save face for the one being criticized. However, cultural differences could
result in variance in criticism strategy preferences and an interlocutor may inappropriately
choose some criticism strategies according to his own culture with another interlocutor
from different culture, thus leading misunderstanding in the cross-cultural communication.
The fact that criticism plays a very important in teaching and learning is
undeniable. This is because students may learn from mistakes of one another as well as
from the comments that they receive. Teachers, however, form different cultures have
different ways of giving criticisms to their students’ presentations. Some may be open and
direct in their criticisms while others may resort to indirect strategies. Thus, misusing this
may have counter-productive effects on the relationships between the interlocutors.

All the aforementioned reasons have encouraged us to carry out a study entitled
“An American and Vietnamese Cross – Cultural Study on Teachers’ Criticisms to
Students’ Presentations”. We do this study with the hope of raising the awareness of
cross-cultural differences in American and Vietnamese ways of criticizing in general and
criticizing students’ presentations in particular.
2. AIMS OF THE STUDY
The study aims to make a comparison in the ways of criticizing students’ presentations
between American and Vietnamese teachers.
To reach this aim, two objectives need to be achieved. First, the study examines what
politeness strategies are employed by American and Vietnamese teachers when they
give criticisms to their students’ presentations. Second, the study also analyzes the

2
similarities and differences between two groups of teachers in the use of politeness
strategies in their criticism to students’ presentations.
3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The main focus of this study is the teachers’ politeness strategies in giving
criticisms to students’ presentation. Not everything to criticism is studied but merely
negative criticisms about presentations in classroom.
To serve the purpose of the research, the target population is identified as American
and Vietnamese college teachers who teach third-year students. This selection ensures that
the students of these teachers are required to make frequent oral presentations during their
terms and the teachers have experience in giving comments on students’ presentations.
4. METHODOLOGY
Since the main purpose of the study is to compare the ways of criticizing students’
presentations between American and Vietnamese teachers; therefore, describing,
comparing and contrastive analysis prove be the best candidates of all. Thus, the thesis will
be oriented in the following steps:
- do the questionnaire
- identify strategies of criticism of both English and Vietnamese teachers in the

source of questionnaire result.
- classify the criticisms into sub-strategies
- describe the criticisms in each language to find out the typical features of each sub-
strategies.
- analyze, compare, and contrast criticizing strategies based on the cultural features
in the two languages to point out the basic similarities and differences in this
aspect.
- reach the comments and conclusions on the subject under research.
5. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The study is composed of three parts:
Part I: INTRODUCTION
Introduction describes the study’s rationale, aims, objectives, scope and
methodology.
Part II: DEVELOPMENT
There are three chapters in this part.

3
Chapter 1: Literature Review lays the theoretical foundation for the research by
discussing (1) theory of speech act, (2) speech act of criticizing, (3) directness and
indirectness in language and culture, and (4) an overview of presentation and criteria for a
good presentation.
Chapter 2: Study details the methods that have been used and the procedures that
have been followed by the researcher.
Chapter 3: Results and Discussion presents the findings from the survey and
discuss them in detail.
Part III: CONCLUSION
This part ends the study by summarizing its main points as well as points out the
limitations and suggestions for further studies.

I
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