1 Part One: Introduction I Rationale: Many studies in recent years (Bouton, 1996; Kulka-Blum, 1989, etc.) have shown that the practice and development of communication skills, particularly speaking and listening, must come with advanced knowledge of social language if the learner wants to enhance the ability to acquire these skills According to the research done by Blum-Kulka et al (1989), Kasper (1995) and some other scholars, in daily communication, the indirect illocutionary act, is done more often than the direct illocutionary act Therefore, in addition to the difficulties of grammar, structure, or pronunciation, foreign language learners also get difficulty in using language appropriately related to the idioms and cultural differences, or to express indirectness According to Gumperz (1982, cited by Tam, 2005) “People in different cultures may communicate in different ways Differences in culture can cause problems leading to failure in communication” According to a study on greeting of the American group by Eisenstein and colleagues conducted in 1996, foreigners often apply some salutations not be suitable for native speakers, and this, in some cases, causes people to be vulnerable, and may lead to congestion in communication One of the reasons is due to the influences or transfers from Vietnamese When people approach the other party, they are entering his personal space Hence, this action causes a face-threatening action, which is proposed by Brown Levinson Therefore, people need a greeting to smoothen the interrelationship Based on the theory of politeness proposed by Brown & Levinson (1987), this study is designed to investigate greetings by Vietnamese learners of English II Aims of the study The purpose of this study was to investigate the strategies of greeting used by the 3rd year students of Foreign Language Department in Haiphong University in order to answer three questions below: How Vietnamese students use English greeting in the studied situations? How Vietnamese students use Vietnamese greeting in the studied situations? What are the similarities and differences involved in use of Vietnamese and English in greeting by Vietnamese learners of English? III Scope of the study This study focuses on the greeting strategies in both English and Vietnamese by Vietnamese learners of English, which just relate to verbal communication In his research, Eisenstein found that humans in general often use eight strategies to greet different people in different cases and each strategy they use depends on the interaction of power (P), distance (D), and ranking of imposition (R) However, this case study involving the students of Hai Phong University, P, D and R are assumed to be very small VI Design of the study The study consists of three main parts: Part One: Introduction Part Two: Development (contains chapters) Chapter I: Literature review Chapter II: Methodology Chapter III Data Analysis Part Three: Conclusion Part two: development Chapter I: Literature review 1.1 Definition of communication and communication competence 1.1.1 Definition of communication Communication is the process of transferring information from one source to another Communication is commonly defined as "the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs" Communication can be perceived as a two-way process in which there is an exchange and progression of thoughts, feelings or ideas towards a mutually accepted goal or direction 1.1.2 Communication competence Communicative competence is a linguistic term which refers, in this study, to a learner's L2 ability It not only refers to a learner's ability to apply and use grammatical rules, but also to form correct utterances, and know how to use these utterances appropriately The term underlies the view of language learning implicit in the communicative approach to language teaching The term was coined by Dell Hymes in 1966, reacting against the perceived inadequacy of Noam Chomsky's (1965) distinction between competence and performance Hymes' ideas about communicative competence were originally research-based rather than pedagogical Specifically, to address Chomsky's abstract notion of competence, Hymes (1972; 1977; 1994) discussed the ethnographicoriented exploration of communicative competence that included 'communicative form and function in integral relation to each other His research-oriented ideas have undergone an epistemic transformation: from empirically oriented questions to an idealized pedagogic doctrine' (Leung, 2005) Chomsky's view of linguistic competence, however, was not intended to inform pedagogy, but serve as part of developing a theory of the linguistic system itself, idealized as the abstract language knowledge of the monolingual adult native speaker, and distinct from how they happen to use and experience language Hymes, rather than Chomsky,0 developed a theory of education and learning Canale and Swain (1980) defined communicative competence in terms of four components: Grammatical competence: words and rules Sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness Discourse competence: cohesion and coherence Strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies Canale and Swain's definition has become canonical in applied linguistics A more recent survey of communicative competence by Bachman (1990) divides it into the broad headings of "organizational competence," which includes both grammatical and discourse (or textual) competence, and "pragmatic competence," which includes both sociolinguistic and "illocutionary" competence Through the influence of communicative language teaching, it has become widely accepted that communicative competence should be the goal of language education, central to good classroom practice (e.g Savignon 1998) This is in contrast to previous views in which grammatical competence was commonly given top priority The understanding of communicative competence has been influenced by the field of pragmatics and the philosophy of language concerning speech acts as described in large part by John Searle and J.L Austin 1.2 Speech Act Theory According to Searle (1969, p.24) language is part of theory of action, and speech acts are those verbal acts such as promising, threatening and greeting that one performs in speaking On this view, minimal unit of human communication are not linguistic expression, but rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements, asking questions, giving directions, apologizing, thanking greeting and so on These acts are called illocutionary acts (Searle, 1969) The notions of illocutionary acts, illocutionary force, direct and indirect speech acts are central to speech act theory Searle (1969,p.23) claims that the term “ illocutionary act refers to an utterance with a communicative force” For instance, when one says, “I promise I won’t it again” this is an act of promising Similarly, when one say “hi! Jim” or “Hello, Peter! How have you been these days?” these are acts of greeting Thus, a speaker performs illocutionary acts by expressing his/her intention to promise something, to greet some body, to start the conversation, etc., in such a way that the listener can recognize the speaker’s intention Related to the notion of illocutionary act is the concept of illocutionary point The concept of the illocutionary point refers to the point or purpose of illocution (Searle, 1990a, p351) Based on the purposes of acts Searle (1990a, p351) identifies five illocutionary points namely assertive, comissive, directive, declarative, and expressive Thus, requests such as “Hi, there!”, “Hello!” or “Good morning sir!” all have directive illocutionary point However, they are different in illocutionary forces While the first and second examples are considered as less formal greeting, the third is a formal one A distinction is made between the illocutionary point and illocutionary forces of an act which claims that “while the illocutionary point of informal/less formal/ formal greeting: all are attempts to get hearers to know the speaker is greeting, their illocutionary forces are different” (Searle, 1990a, p.351) In his terminology, force is equal to strength For instance, in comparing “I suggest we go to the movies” with “I insist that we go to the movies”, Searle argues that they have the same illocutionary point, i.e an attempt to get the interlocutor to go to the movies, but the same illocutionary point, i.e an attempt to get the interlocutor to go to the movies, but the same illocutionary point is presented with different strength or force The force of an utterance is related to the status or position of the Speaker and Hearer Also it reflects the assumption or the presupposition about the Speaker’s relative power over the Hearer in the communicative context Searle argues that each type of illocutionary act requires certain conditions for the successful and effective performance of that act and these he calls felicity conditions Searle identifies four different kind of felicity conditions These conditions relate, on the one hand, to the beliefs and attitudes of the speaker and the hearer, and, on the other, to their mutual understanding of the use of the linguistic devices for communication All things considered, the Speaker has to choose among his repertoire of linguistic forms the form which s/he could successfully use to get the Hearer to know his/her action Thus, s/he has to decide whether to say it using the on-record or off-record strategy and/or what kind of redress would best serve his purpose etc In speech act theory, direct speech acts and indirect speech acts are distinguished from each other Indirectness is defined as “those cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another” Searle (1975, p.60) Thus, in direct speech acts the speaker says what s/he means, while in indirect speech acts the speaker means more than s/he says (Searle, 1980, p.viii), i.e., speakers perform one illocutionary act implicitly by way of performing another illocutionary act explicitly For instance, instead of saying “hello, how have you been” the speaker may say “Son, Where have you been? ” In this case the direct act is asking for the hearer’s information, but the indirect act is that of greeting the hearer Thus, the act of asking about the hearer’s information is performed explicitly while the act of greeting the hearer is performed implicitly 1.3 Politeness Principle Politeness has been discussed and well developed by several scholars such as Lakoff, Leech and Brown & Levinson etc In the following section, a brief discussion on different views of politeness will be presented It then will be followed by a discussion on the social factors affecting the choice of linguistic politeness strategies in communication with special reference on greeting In reference to politeness Lakoff (1973, cited in Green, 1989) asked why it is that it is considered polite for an English speaking hostess to greet a guest with (a) “Hello, what you need?”, that if she used (b) “Good morning sir, How can I help you?” it would be counted as familiar, for the same purpose would be considered downright rude Green comments that participants in a conversation can choose to be polite avoid being rude, or they can choose to as they please conversationally regardless of others’ feeling and wishes They can exploit their knowledge of the principles of politeness to be intentionally rude Thus, Lakoff describes three different rules a speaker might follow in choosing to be polite: (1) Don’t impose; (2) Offer options; (3) Encourage feelings of camaraderie The first one, don’t impose, is the most formal politeness rule, which is appropriate to situations in which there is an acknowledged difference in power and status between participants For instance an employee and a boss, a worker and the manager are considered as having different power and status Imposing on someone means impeding one’s desire to act as s/he pleases, refraining from imposing on someone means not to impede these desires Therefore, a speaker who wishes to be polite according to this rule will avoid imposition, but mitigate, or ask permission or apologize for making the addressee anything, which s/he does not want to Not imposing means not giving or seeking personal problems, habits, and the like More particularly, not imposing means avoiding earthly, slangy, emotional language, and also topics which are taboo, considered too personal to discuss in public Thus, love, sex, politics, religion, economic difficulties, the human body etc are inappropriate to discuss in public The second rule, offer options, is a more formal politeness one which is appropriate to situations in which the participants have approximately equal status and power, but are not socially close, for example, the relationship between a businessperson and a new client, two strangers sharing a compartment on a train It is believed that utterances in English are phrased in a pragmatically ambiguous way so as to give H a graceful out if s/he prefers not to the act comply with this rule of politeness The third rule, encourage feeling of camaraderie, for friendly or intimate politeness, is appropriate to intimates or close friends In intimate politeness, almost any topic of conversation is fair game, assuming that with a close friend; one should be able to discuss anything Concerning this rule, Green explains very clearly that to speak indirectly means that interlocutors not know each other well enough, implying that intimate politeness is not appropriate because they not have close relationship On the contrary, informal politeness not only shows S’s interest in the other by asking personal questions and making personal remarks but also trusts and regard by being open about one’s own experiences and feelings Regarding politeness issue, Grice’s concept of CP (Cooperative Principle) has also been amply documented in literature However, this position has been claimed to be insufficient as an explanation of the relation between sense and force In an attempt to supplement Grice’s CP, Leech (1983) proposes Principle of Politeness (PP) According to Leech, the PP might be formulated in a general way as ‘minimize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs’ Different kinds and degrees of politeness are called for in different situations Leech claimed that politeness is essentially asymmetrical, which means that what is polite with respect to H or to some third party will be impolite with respect to S, and vice versa Base on this position he suggests the most important kind of politeness in English – speaking society is covered by the operation of the Tact Maxim The Tact Maxim is said to be applicable to Searle’s directive and commissive categories of functions, which refer, in their propositional content X, to some action to be performed, respectively, by the hearer or the speaker This action is called A, and may be evaluated in terms of what S assumes to be its cost or benefit to S or H On this basic, X’s utterance such as (‘you will find me the document’, etc.) may be placed on a cost-benefit scale In his explanation, at some rather indeterminate point on this scale (depending on the context) the relevant value becomes ‘benefit to H’ rather than ‘cost to H’ In addition, another way of obtaining a scale of politeness is using a more and more indirect kind of illocution Indirect illocutions tent to be more polite because they because they increase the degree of optionality, and as his states, the more indirect an illocution the more diminished and tentative its force tends to be In fact, the point of strategy of indirectness is to phrase the impositives more and more towards the negative choice, so that it provides more ways out and becomes easier for H to say no In particular, the more options out given to H the more appropriate the illocution tends to be As such, the cost – benefit scale brings with an implicit balance sheet of S’s and H’s relative standing, and there also seems to be an assumption that a maintenance of equilibrium is desirable (Leech, 1983) One important point Leech makes clear about the maxims is that they are observed up to a certain point, rather than absolute rules Thus, knowing how far we can go with each maxim is very important and very language and culture specific For instance, he goes on explaining that in making a greeting for a second hearer in English, it is slightly more polite if H’s role as potential benefactory is suppressed, thus “Good morning sir, how can I help you?” is more polite than “Hello, what you need?” In this instance, the Generosity maxim appears to be effective and is supported by the observation that an impositive can be softened, and thereby made it more polite, by omission of reference to the cost to H The following section will discuss the social factors that most influence the choice of politeness strategies in speech As has been discussed earlier, politeness strategies are viewed as ways to perform FTAs to appropriately attend to H’s face through the assessment of these factors The choice of appropriate polite expressions in a given context depends on a number of factors, which Brown & Levinson (1987) have subsumed into a simple formula They postulate three independent variables that have a systematic effect on the choice of polite strategies: the relative power (P) between the Speaker and the Hearer, the social distance (D) between them and the absolute ranking (R) of the imposition in the particular culture Each of these has an independent effect on the strategic choice of polite expressions The weightiness of an FTA is related to these 10 variables While they are not the only factors affecting speech act formulation, Brown & Levinson claim that they subsume all others (egg status, authority, occupation, ethnic identity, friendship, situational factors, etc.) The power (P) variable in Brown & Levinson’s (1987, p.77) terms is an asymmetrical social dimension of relative power The relative power (P) that the speaker has over the hearer is defined as the degree to which the speaker can impose his or her own plans and his self-evaluation (face) at the expense of the hearer’s plans and self-evaluation These are two sources of P, either of which may be authorized or unauthorized: material control (over economic distribution and physical force) and metaphysical control (over the actions of others, by virtue of metaphysical forces subscribed to by those others) Searle (1990a, p 354) argues that “some acts require extra-linguistic institutions for their performance and some not” For instance, an employee may request the manager to allow some money for buying some equipment for the office, but the manager may not request this of the employee, because the manager is in authorized control of material, in this case, money Or an armed robber in his possession of a gun may order, as opposed to request, a victim to raise their hands The robber’s power in this case is not an unauthorized one because it derives from his possession of a weapon (Searle, 1990a, p.355) In England, for instance, the naming of a new ship is only performed by the Queen of England Obviously, in most cases an individual power is drawn from either of these sources, which may overlap Unfortunately, in cross-linguistic and interlanguage research in speech act behavior the notion of P has not always been defined precisely enough (SpencerOatey, 1996) While Brown & Levinson (1987) and Brown & Gilman (1972) view power as control of another person’s behavior, Cansler and Stiles (1981, pp 459460) focus on social rank Leichty and Applegate (1991) interpret power in yet another way: the legitimate right to exert influence Along with ‘power’, the most popular name used for this dimension, the terms ‘social power’, ‘status’, ‘dominance’ and ‘authority’ are also used, although ‘dominance’ and ‘authority’ 18 STT Strategy Example in Example in English Vietnamese detail) A Well, I’m glad you’re back It’s so nice to see you I have many things to tell you B Aw Well, we’re back! How have you A Thế nào? B Good! B Cũng A Great What will A Hay you next? The intimate greeting been doing? A Well? gì? The all-business ………… Client: Mr Matone? ……………… Nhân viên: Chào anh! greeting Joe Matone: Yes? Thủ trưởng: Vào Clien: I want to talk Có chuyện thế? to you about Puerto Nhân viên: Mấy bữa Rico nóng anh Joe Matone: Oh? Thủ trưởng: Vào hạ Come in What about Puerto Rico (sited by Tâm) Nhân viên: Mẹ em bị ốm anh Bà cụ có quê Anh cho em xin nghỉ ngày thăm cụ mang cho cụ tiền thuốc men nhé? Thủ trưởng: Mấy ngày? 19 STT Strategy Example in English Example in Vietnamese Nhân viên: ngày anh Đi 01 ngày Thủ trưởng: Ừ, Nhớ hẹn Nhân viên: Cám ơn anh Em Chào anh Thủ trưởng: Ừ, đi À mà cho gửi lời hỏi thăm bà cụ A: Eh Hà? Where are you from? tên Hà? Quê đâu B: Yes Vĩnh Phúc thế? and you? B Ừ Vĩnh Phúc Bạn A: Uh, My name …? Hoa Hải Phòng B: A Mình tên Hoa Hải …… Phịng A: ……… B.……………… A: Hey, feel better? A……………… A: Đỡ chưa? B: A little hurt B: Vẫn thấy đau …… The introductory greeting Nhân viên: Vâng A Này Nghe nói bạn ………… The re-greeting Chapter II: Methodology 2.1 Design research 20 The data were collected via questionnaires which designed in English and Vietnamese with open ended questions Sixty sheets (50% in Vietnamese and 50% in English) were delivered to 30 students (33.3% male, 66.7% female) and 60 sheets received back by e-mail Questionnaire includes three parts: Part is designed to get parameters Part is designed to find informants’ frequency of using English Part is designed to review greeting strategies in different situations (six situations mentioned which the informants meet regularly) 2.2 Informants Participants are 30 Vietnamese learners of English, third year students of English at Haiphong University They are classmates and the male accounts for 33.3% and female accounts for 66.7% of the population The English acquisition of informants varies much from very limited into groups of excellent, good, fair and poor language competence They are all third year student of English at Haiphong University; average age is 20, lowest 19 and highest is 23 Most of the students had studied English for seven years at high school At the time of the test, the students of Year 1, Year had not attended the survey because of their language acquisition, the students of Year had to take part in many activities to complete their course at university It means that students of Year have no time for the survey And finally, the students of Year had completed some important subjects like English – Vietnamese translation, cross-culture …, so that the students of Year can be suitable for the survey The distribution of informants can be seen in the table below: 21 Male Language Acquisition Female Excellent 33.3% 66.7% 10.0% Good 46.7% Fair 33.3% Poor 10.0% Table 2.1 Participants distribution on gender and language acquisition 2.3 Data collection methods 2.3.1 Data collection procedure Step (Pilot): Questionnaires (in both English and Vietnamese) are delivered to a small group of Vietnamese students And then the questionnaires are checked again depending on the pilot’s results and revised Step (Official): Open ended questions were designed in English and Vietnamese Sixty sheets (50% in Vietnamese and 50% in English) were delivered to 30 students (33.3% male, 66.7% female) and 60 sheets received back by e-mail Participants will complete surveys; survey one three days before survey two in order to ensure truthfulness, consistency and accuracy in the surveys 2.3.2 Data analytic methods: Finding frequency distribution as seen from parameters by using quantitative method Qualitative method is used to review the strategies sections 22 Once the findings are available, a hypothesis is formulated, and then is tested against the facts through an oral interview 2.4 Situations used in the study Situations used in English: Sit 1: Assuming that you and your friend(s) suddenly see each other when you are in hurry, both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero) Sit 2: You and your friend(s) see each other when both are on the way to an appointment but not in hurry, you have some time to have small talk to your friend(s), both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero) Sit 3: You are invited to your friend(s)’ party at his/her house Your friend(s) open the door, both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero) Sit 4: This is the first time you come to a new language class You have a seat next to a new classmate, you find that (s)he an old one, both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero) Sit 5: You see a close classmate after a long time you haven’t seen each other Both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero) Sit 6: You suddenly see a close classmate Both of you would say (in case: power and distance are zero) The same situations used in Vietnamese: Tình 1: Bạn 01 bạn lớp phía Cả hai vội Các bạn nhìn thấy nói: 23 Tình 2: Bạn 01 bạn lớp phía Cả hai tới chỗ hẹn không vội Hai người có thời gian để trị chuyện với Các bạn nhìn thấy nói: Tình 3: Bạn mời đến dự tiệc 01 bạn lớp Người bạn mở cửa Các bạn nhìn thấy nói: Tình 4: Bạn bạn lớp học ngồi cạnh buổi học Bạn quay sang phát 01 tên bạn cũ Bạn nói: Tình 5: Bạn nhìn thấy bạn lớp thân thiết sau thời gian dài khơng gặp Các bạn nói: Tình 6: Bạn gặp bạn thân lớp Các bạn chào nhau: Chapter III Data Analysis and discussions 3.1 The Vietnamese students’ choice of language when greeting 24 As stated previously in “Methodology of the Study”, the data were collected in connected writing questionnaires (in English and Vietnamese) of 30 students of English at Haiphong University and were reckoned up The statistical data were analyzed by methods of analyses (both relational and independent) This task consisted of identifying which greeting strategies the students choose and how many students choose the same strategy, how many males/ females students accounted for The distribution can be seen in the following table: Sur in En Male Female Total Strategy Total Total St1 St2 St3 St4 St5 St6 St7 St8 Sur in Vn Male Female 30 15 10 1 20 12 30 16 10 1 20 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Table 3.1 Vietnamese students’s choice of strategies In order to test the findings, a hypothesis is formulated All utterances were audiorecorded using portable Panasonic RN 202 micro cassette recorder Recordings were made onto SONY MC-60 cassette tapes The micro cassette was placed approximately 20.32 to 30.48 centimeters in front of the informants to make the recordings clearer and accurate Because of the limited time, transcriptions became impossible, however, recordings are well-kept 3.1.1 General view 25 The chart below shows the frequency of which third year students of Department for English Languages and Literature at Haiphong University greet their classmates in English 18.5% 0.0% 25.9% often sometimes rarely 55.6% never Figure 3.1: Vietnamese students’ frequency of greeting in English As can be seen from the chart, most Vietnamese students sometimes greet their classmates in English while no student never chooses to that It is obvious seen that more students (25.9%) often greet their classmates in English than ones rarely (18.5%) 3.1.2 As seen from gender The table below shows the choice of greeting strategies under the influence of gender It is seen in the table that more male than female students choose to greet their classmates with strategy in both English and Vietnamese However, the difference between them is of not much quantity Whereas women seem to choose strategies and more frequently than men, the number of male and female students choose strategy are equal That is to say, female students seem to use longer ways of greeting than male ones, especially in Vietnamese 26 Survey in English Strategy St1 St2 St3 St4 St5 ST6 ST7 St8 Total Male 30.0% 50.0% 13.3% 6.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Female 16.7% 10.0% 3.3% 3.33% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 13.3% 40.0% 10.0% 3.33% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Survey in Vietnamese Total Male 23.3% 53.3% 13.3% 10.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Female 16.7% 10.0% 3.3% 3.3% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 6.7% 43.3% 10.0% 6.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Table 3.2 Vietnamese student’s choice as seen from gender It is also noticeable that there are much more women (40%) than men (10%) choosing to greet their classmates using strategy 3.1.3 As seen from language acquisition Survey in English Strategy St1 St2 St3 St4 St5 St6 St7 St8 Excellent 0.0% 0.0% 3.3% 6.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Good 10.0% 23.3% 10.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Fair 13.3% 20.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Poor 6.7% 6.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Table 3.3 Vietnamese student’s choice as seen from language acquisition It is clearly seen from the table that the excellent students choose using greeting strategy while poor students choose greeting strategies and Greeting strategies and are chosen much by the good and fair students 27 That is to say, a Vietnamese student with enough general knowledge of English tends to use shorter and simpler strategies than longer and more complex strategies in greeting 3.2 The Vietnamese students’ choice of strategies when greeting in English and Vietnamese It is clearly seen from the table below when people are of equal status, close relationship and slight rank of imposition, only the first strategies are used After collecting data from the questionnaires and processing preliminarily, it comes to our agreement that only the four mentioned strategies are chosen among informants Strategy St1 St2 St3 St4 St5 ST6 ST7 St8 Survey in English Total 30.0% 50.0% 13.3% 6.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Survey in Vietnamese Total 23.3% 53.3% 13.3% 10.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Table 3.4 Vietnamese students’s choice of strategies when greeting in English and Vietnamese The highest percentage of students chooses greeting strategy in both survey (in English and in Vietnamese) and the lowest percentage one belongs to strategy 28 The table shows that the first group who know well each other or have a more intimate relationship they often used strategy “greeting on the run” Among the 30 students, there are 30% used this strategy to greet their classmates 60% 50% 50% 53.3% 40% 30% Sur in En 30% Sur in Vn 23.3% 20% 13.3% 13.3% 6.7% 10% 10% 0% St1 St2 St3 St4 Figure 3.2 Vietnamese students’ choice of strategies when greeting in English and Vietnamese As can be seen from the chart, at the same choice of strategy, Vietnamese students seem to use that choice in Vietnamese more than in English (strategy 2, strategy and strategy 4) It’s also clearly seen from the chart and the table that when greeting in Vietnamese, Vietnamese students love using longer and more complex strategy than when greeting in English Male students choose shorter and simpler strategies than female students such as: in strategy (the shortest strategy) male students’ choice accounted for 16.7% while female students’ one is 13.3% 29 3.3 Finding and discussion The analysis I carried out suggests that language acquisition has a great influence on the choice of greeting strategies When the learner starts the language course their language acquisition is still limited It’s not enough for them to produce correct utterances in different situations and settings Therefore, they tend to use simpler and shorter greeting strategies And if it is possible, they tend go by without greeting in English When their language competence is improved during the course they will feel safer as the possibility of making mistake is reduced They tend to use longer and more complex greeting strategies such as: “the chat”, “the long greeting” Additionally, they try to avoid greeting in English as when their language competence is lower It’s obviously seen from the table that when greeting in Vietnamese, Vietnamese students tend to use longer and complex greeting strategies than simple and short ones It’s come to an assumption that this characteristic can be rooted from the choice of directness and in directness in Vietnamese culture Due to research results conducted by experts, there is the fact that in the same setting with the same communicating partner, Vietnamese people in general often use more elements of tentativeness and surrounding than others Especially, when the communicating partners are of higher status (P), of far social distance, Vietnamese people tend to use very high level of tentativeness However, this case study assumed that P, D and R are very small It’s clearly seen that Vietnamese informants with the same status partners and setting tend to use higher level of tentativeness than one use English communicating formula Additionally, the data analysis also finds that when greeting in both Vietnamese and English, women seem to use longer strategies as frequently in comparison with man It’s come to assumption that women in all parts of the world 30 have longer messages to convey the same amount of information As the nature, women talk not in order for others to listen Therefore, they talk just because they like talking 31 Part Three: Conclusion I Conclusion This paper investigated three questions: How Vietnamese students use English greeting in the studied situations?; How Vietnamese students use mother-tongue greeting in the studied situations?; What are the similarities and differences involved in use of Vietnamese and English in greeting by Vietnamese learners of English? The study results show a lot of differences in using language greeting However, the learners of English use many similar greeting strategies in the specific situations, a number of turns, topics discussed in the greeting in both languages (Vietnamese and English) but different in answering, the formula of specific greeting, and some different topics selected The number of strategies found in the data may not be large enough to substantiate the fact that Vietnamese learners of English always have a great deal of difficulty in transferring differences between Vietnamese and English However, there is enough evidence to suggest that these greeting strategies still need to be identified and collected during speaking training The paper has identified some typical greeting strategies in the Vietnamese and English caused by the influence of the Vietnamese specific situations The most common greeting strategies in the communication include: “Greeting on the run”, “Speedy Greeting”, “The chat” and “Long Greeting” Some strategies were suggested that can be applied to prevent the possible problems arising from transferring Vietnamese into English 32 II IMPLICATION 2.1 Suggestions for teaching and learning English: For the teachers: Teachers need to be in creativeness and activeness using the source of material about greeting which close to the actual target language in class Teachers also need to master knowledge about second language studying and applied linguistics transference to support learners in learning second language For the learners: Learners need to be aware of grammar of a foreign language It does not mean that they will have a successful communication if they are not good at grammar Learners should also study the differences in one language in different cultures, which help them better at understanding the language, and can solve the problem Students should be encouraged to study about Vietnamese linguistics, history and culture then take it as a foundation to have better understanding English 2.2 For the further study: This study just investigated in verbal communication of greeting strategies While the research was carried out, we found that gender plays an important part in choosing greeting strategies For the further study, we will pay more time for this finding to come to a conclusion and a wider scale in non-verbal communication will be studied ... English Example in Vietnamese Nhân viên: ngày anh Đi 01 ngày Thủ trưởng: Ừ, Nhớ hẹn Nhân viên: Cám ơn anh Em Chào anh Thủ trưởng: Ừ, đi À mà cho gửi lời hỏi thăm bà cụ A: Eh Hà? Where are you from?... Nhân viên: Mẹ em bị ốm anh Bà cụ có q Anh cho em xin nghỉ ngày thăm cụ mang cho cụ tiền thuốc men nhé? Thủ trưởng: Mấy ngày? 19 STT Strategy Example in English Example in Vietnamese Nhân viên: ... Mr Matone? ……………… Nhân viên: Chào anh! greeting Joe Matone: Yes? Thủ trưởng: Vào Clien: I want to talk Có chuyện thế? to you about Puerto Nhân viên: Mấy bữa Rico nóng anh Joe Matone: Oh? Thủ