THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DAO THI HOA A STUDY OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS' REFUSALS IN ENGLISH AT CAM PHA HIGH SCHOOL Nghiên cứu việc học sinh THPT Cẩm Phả sử dụng tiếng Anh để từ chối M.A THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION) Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor : Dr Nguyen Trong Du THAI NGUYEN – 2019 Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale The idea that brings me to the topic of this study originated from my own story happening 15 years ago when I was a student at Thai Nguyen University One morning, I and one of my classmates went to see our American teacher, Diane When we had just been invited to sit down, she asked," Would you like something to drink?” my friend said: "A cup of tea, please" but I replied: "No, thanks" Then she brought out just only two cups of tea, one for her and one for my friend I felt a bit surprised because normally in our Vietnamese home, we often offer some kinds of drink to everyone who comes to see us although the guess often says to the host: Oh, there's no need or you are so careful Such a situation let me think a lot about the differences in culture between Vietnamese and Western people That means the Vietnamese often not directly say what they actually mean, but the West prefer a direct speech act and it is easier to understand The given situation raised us a question that to learn a language means we also have to learn more about another culture As a non-native teacher of English, I find myself that it is not enough just to show learners words, structures, and other language patterns, but we also have to guide them how to use the language into real life situations effectively and naturally It is pragmatics that helps us a lot in dealing with such problems Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics dealing with the language in use and the context in which it is used And in pragmatics, speech act is an element that a speaker performs when making an utterance We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, a greeting, a request, a complaint, an invitation, a compliment or a refusal It means speech acts realize real-life communications Therefore, when English teachers are following the communicative approach in teaching, certain aspects of language use as speech acts need to be taken into account The refusal speech act used by high school students is a problem which gains much my attention The first concern is the high school students' communicative competence It is inevitable to all teachers of English in communicative language teaching (CLT) The language learners' environment as CLT techniques, the interaction with one another, authentic texts, in class and outside of class is a consideration However, with my experience in teaching high-school students, many of them cannot reply a request, an offer in the way the English native speakers do, especially in refusing, they may cause misunderstanding or even face threatening to the hearer The next matter is the content of textbook (Tieng Anh 10, 11, 12 )( both years and 10 years) Each unit includes skills and language focus in which the authors have tried to provide authentic materials for the students to practice However, how to adapt these sources to be suitable for students to make use of them in communication is a concern Moreover, politeness strategies, which is used to soften the threat to each other's face is also very important to help a conversation successful but Vietnamese culture affects politeness strategies, especially the ways high school students refuse an offer, an invitation, a suggestion because of the indirect ways of refusing in the way the Vietnamese often to others This study was conducted with the expectation to find out how high school students refuse to an invitation and a request, whether there is any difference between what they think they will refuse and the way they really refuse in a given situation From the data analysis, I will know more about how Vietnamese cultural influence on their way of speaking English After that, some suggestions will be noted down to help work out the more effective ways of teaching English according to communicative language teaching approach 1.2 Aims of the study The overall of the study aim is to explore how Vietnamese culture affects refusing strategies in English by Vietnamese high school students From the investigation, this study will help to find out to what extent Vietnamese high school students can apply their knowledge into practice, and to suggest some ways for integrating cultural practices into the high shool curriculum 1.3 Research questions Following the aims, the study tries to answer the two questions as (1) How high school students refuse in English? (2) Are there any differences between the written and spoken refusals? 1.4 Scope of the study This study focuses on refusing speech act to the invitations and requests in English made by high school students The study is conducted at Cam Pha High School in Quang Ninh province 200 students of grade 10 at Cam Pha High School are involved in the study The study has been carried out in the second semester of academic year 2018-2019 with only 10th graders; thus, the respondents does not represent for all students who study English major in Vietnam These students are surveyed to work out how they refuse to the invitations and requests in English and which Vietnamese cultural practice affects their refusing speech act 1.5 Significance of the study The present study partly contributes to provoke both theoretical and practical utilization of English in communicative situations for the learners Theoretically, in spite of certain number of studies previously conducting the investigation into the refusals in English, they mainly discuss the difference between the ways Vietnamese respond to a situation and the ones of the Western people In practice, the speech acts such as the invitations, the offers or requests and how to respond them are one of the key points in communicating in daily lifestyles However, there has been some gaps between the syllabus for teaching English at high schools and the ability of using English of students authentically Thus, this study with a view to finding out the gap between the English in current textbooks and everyday English in the aspects of culture will help students get access to practical English Furthermore, for the teachers of English, this study is believed to raise the question of the importance of shifting their teaching approach from teacher-centered to student-centered This is relevant to the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, which has been boosted in the English teaching lessons in education system of all levels in Vietnam in recent years 1.6 Design of the study The study is divided into three main parts: the Introduction, the Development and the Conclusion with Reference with five chapters Chapter 1: Introduction - deals with the rationale, aims, scope, methods, significance and design of the study Chapter 2: Literature Review- is about to give some theoretical background related to pragmatics, speech acts, refusing strategies, politeness strategies, semantic formulas, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and previous studies relating to the topic of the research Chapter 3: Methodology- shows the research governing orientation, research methods and performs the situation analysis, participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures and data analysis The detailed results of the DCT and role-play and a universal analysis on the collected data are shown Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions - presents major findings and discussions from the data collected in both DCT and role-play Chapter 5: Conclusion- concludes a review of the study, limitations of the study and recommends suggestions for further researches Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW It is stated in the previous chapter that the object of this study is the refusals in English made by the Vietnamese high school students The refusal is one of the speech acts in everyday life and speech acts are core issues of pragmatics, a branch of linguistics All of these concepts will be described in this chapter 2.1 Pragmatics and speech act theory 2.1.1 Pragmatics Pragmatics has been emerged as a branch of modern linguistics because it is the "science of language as it is used by real, live people, for their own purposes and within their limitations and affordances" (Mey, 1993, p 5) Pragmatics is used to be defined as "the study of language in use" (G Brown & Yule, 198, p 27) Jenny Thomas in Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics (1995) mentions pragmatics as "a study of meaning in interaction" The advent of pragmatics helps to answer the question of why an utterance is semantically correct but it may cause misunderstanding for the hearers if they not know in which context the speaker delivered the utterance Pragmatics has played such a preliminary role in teaching and learning English procedure Teaching and learning English as EFL has been paid much attention worldwide because English an international language that connects people all around the world However, English is spoken in different settings and levels of intercommunication among all English speakers who not share a language or a culture As a result, speakers must know many pragmatic elements in order to avoid inaccuracies and misunderstandings during communication As a matter of fact, such a great usage of English language requires a pragmatic competence which will help all those who speak or learn English as a second language Thomas defined pragmatic competence as “… the ability to analyze language in a conscious manner.” (cited in Holmes & Brown, 2007, p 524) The meaning includes verbal and non-verbal elements and it varies according to the context, to the relationship between utterers, also to many other social factors Pragmatic competence should be considered as a optimum goal for all those who teach English as a second language, which constantly represents a challenging task as well Pragmatic competence refers to the ability to comprehend, construct utterances which are accurate and appropriate to the social and cultural circumstances where the communication occurs Pragmatics can be simply understood as a way we convey the meaning through the communication in practice For the learners, especially students at school, pragmatics can be seen as the concrete evidence of students' ability of speaking English to achieve communication goals Pragmatic transfer in refusals is also a remarkable concern It is likely that L2 learners may rely on their native language pragmatic knowledge to perform the target language refusals which may result in pragmatic failures It occurs when speakers apply rules from their first language (L1) to their second language (L2) Beebe et al (1990), for example, reported evidence of pragmatic transfer in refusals made by Japanese learners of English It was found that the content of excuses in both Japanese and English made by Japanese learners of English was far less specific than the content of excuses made by American participants Language proficiency is also an important factor in pragmatic transfer, although the analysis has not led to conclusive results Takahashi and Beebe (1987) proposed the positive correlation hypothesis, predicting that L2 proficiency is positively correlated with pragmatic transfer Despite the fact that Takahashi and Beebe’s own study on refusals performed by Japanese EFL and ESL learners did not clearly present the predicted proficiency effect, some studies (e.g Cohen & Olshtain, 1981; Blum-Kulka, 1982; Olshtain & Cohen, 1989; Cohen, 1997; Hill, 1997; Keshavarz et al., 2006) have supported Takahashi and Beebe’s notion that learners’ limited target language knowledge prevents them from transferring native language pragmatic knowledge For example, Takahashi and Beebe’s (1987) results showed that highly proficient Japanese ESL learners often used a typically Japanese formal tone when performing refusals in L2 Also as mentioned by Keshavarz et al (2006), more proficient students had enough control over the L2 to express their first language feelings at the pragmatic level 2.1.2 Speech acts In the field of pragmatics, speech acts represent a key concept It can be broadly defined as language use in context taking into account the speaker’s and the addressee’s verbal and non-verbal contributions to the negotiation of meaning in interaction It is a unit in which the speakers perform what they want to express by producing utterances According to Austin (1962), a single speech act actually contains three separate but related speech acts: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts According to Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay's in Philosophy of Language: The Central Topics (2007), locutionary acts are "the mere acts of producing some linguistic sounds or mark with a certain meaning or reference" Meanwhile, further Austin considers locutionary act as the act of saying something which has a meaning and creates an understandable utterance to convey or express In his point of view, illocutionary act is performed as an act of saying something or as an act of opposed to saying something The illocutionary utterance has a certain force of it It is well-versed with certain tones, attitudes, feelings, or emotions There will be an intention of the speaker or others in illocutionary utterance It is often used as a tone of warning in day today life Therefore, it can be seen as an offer, an apology, a promise an invitation, a request or a reply to a question Perlocutionary act normally creates a sense of consequential effects on the hearers The effects may be in the form of thoughts, imaginations, feelings or emotions The effect upon the addressee is the main characteristic of perlocutionary utterances Pragmatics is also the performance of speech acts Austin, together with his collaborator, Searle, presented their speech act theory basically on single sentences and only on the speaker' point of view Therefore, his theory has been shown out many drawbacks with much criticism from other authors Hatch (1983) argued that "the same sentences may have the different meanings when said in different situations Archer et al., (2012) replaced "speech acts" with "a discourse act" or "communicative act" Thus, speech acts also take the hearer's perception and reception into consideration 2.2 Refusals and the refusing strategies 2.2.1 Refusing definition As mentioned in the speech acts, the illocutionary utterance as can be seen as an offer, an apology, a promise, an invitation, a requests or a reply to a question In this study, one of the illocutionary utterances will be observed and investigated is the refusal to an invitation and a request Refusing can be understood as the speaker directly or indirectly says no to his/her interlocutor’s request, invitation or suggestion Searl (1977) re-classifies speech acts into five categories and he categorizes refusals into commissives because they commit the refuser to not performing an action Meanwhile, Brown and Levinson (1987) stated that refusals are face-threatening acts and in the same way as disagreeing and disapproving Refusing is an act that expresses the refuser's negative evaluation to the refusee' prior act, threatening the positive face want of a refusee and showing little care about the refusee's feelings Gass & Houck (1999) mentioned refusals as speech acts that occur as negative responses to other acts such as requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions Brown and Levinson (1987), Fraser (1990), Smith (1998) also agree that refusals are sensitive to social variables such as gender, age, level of education, power and social distance Hence, refusals are significant to explore the various cultural aspects of language from the sociolinguistic perspective Brasdefer (2006) claims that refusals are complex speech acts that require not only long sequences of negotiation and cooperative achievements, but also ‘‘face - saving maneuvers to accommodate the noncompliant nature of the act.” (Gas and Houck, 1999, P.2) In general, refusing is a speech act consisting of both social and linguistic patterns 2.2.2 Refusing strategies Refusing is complex issue and this speech act has attracted researchers’ attention as mentioned Among the existing studies, the most influential and bestknown study on refusals is namely Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy In their study, they use DCT as a tool to examine how Japanese learners of English refused requests, invitations, offers and suggestions Their classification is divided into semantic formulas, which are the expressions used to perform a refusal and adjuncts, that is, expressions which occur with a refusal but themselves not be used to perform a refusal The two components - semantic formulas and adjuncts- are described as follow: Classification of Refusals I Direct A Performative (e.g., “I refuse”) B Non performative statement “No’ Negative willingness/ability (“I can’t.” “I won’t.” ) II Indirect A B C D E F G H I Statement of regret (e.g., “I’m sorry…”) Wish (e.g., “I wish I could help you…”) Excuse, reason, explanation (e.g., “I am busy with my homework") Statement of alternative I can X instead of Y (e.g., “I’d rather…”) Why don’t you X instead of Y (e.g., “Why don’t you ask someone else?”) Set condition for future or past acceptance (e.g., “If I am invited next time…”) Promise of future acceptance (e.g., “I promise I’ll…” or “Next time I’ll …” – using “will” of promise or “promise”) Statement of principle (e.g., “ I never business with friends.”) Statement of philosophy (e.g., “One can’t be too careful.”) Attempt to dissuade interlocutor Threat of statement of negative consequences to the requester (e.g., “I won’t be any fun tonight” to refuse an invitation) 10 most refusals in all situations from the recordings It can be seen in the situation in Table 8, among 200 students, there are 67% of students who produced refusals with the first order of semantic formulas But in Table 9, the number from spoken refusals is only 25% And 65% of spoken refusals employ the second order of semantic formulas instead This difference may be a suggestion for investigating the factors of psychology influence on speaking and writing English The power, the social distance from the refusees may affect the refusers' refusals when they were conducting the conversations face-to-face In writing, students would have some time to think about the refusals thoroughly but in conversations, students could be affected by the context and they were forced to produce the refusals spontaneously 4.2.3 More frequent use of adjuncts in spoken refusals This third difference can be seen from the analysed data in the four given tables share the same point In Table (see Page 27) and Table (see Page 28), the element of adjuncts was not found but in table (see Page 29), and more detailed in table (see Page 30), a high proportion of adjuncts presents in most of the refusals in all the situations And the frequency of using adjuncts in the refusals collected from both DCT and role-play can be seen more clearly in the following tables Here are the examples of adjuncts to refusals that was collected from the students' refusals Pause fillers : " er","well","oh","uhm" Statements of empathy: " I know you need some help " Gratitude/ appreciation : " Thank you for inviting me " Statements of positive meaning: "That sounds interesting " Table 10 The frequent use of adjuncts in written refusals * S = Situation * No= Total Number of Refusals * F = Frequency (n = 200) 39 The use of adjuncts in the refusals S.1 S.2 S.3 S.4 S.5 S.6 N F No F No F No F No F N F Pause fillers 0 14 0 12 Statements of empathy 0 0 0 12 3 Gratitude/appreciation 24 12 19 10 16 0 0 0 Statements of positive 24 12 36 18 27 14 14 19 10 22 11 48 24 69 35 43 22 24 17 36 19 37 18 meaning Total * Average frequency of all situations: 23 Table 11 The frequent use of adjuncts in spoken refusals * S = Situation * N= Total Number of Refusals * F= Frequency (n = 20) The use of adjuncts in the refusals S.1 S.2 S.3 S.4 S.5 S.6 N F N F N F N F N F No % Pause fillers 11 55 12 12 60 10 50 40 13 60 2.Statements of empathy 10 0 0 40 30 10 3.Gratitude/appreciation 30 25 35 0 0 0 Statements of positive 30 25 30 20 15 20 25 125 22 110 25 125 22 110 18 85 19 90 meaning Total *Average frequency of all situations: 108 Table 10 and Table 11 describe the percentage of the refusals using four kinds of adjuncts The rate of the adjuncts used in the spoken refusals is much bigger than in the written ones The average frequency of the used adjuncts in the spoken refusal is 108 whilst in the written refusals, it is only 23 Therefore, it can be concluded that the adjuncts used in the spoken refusals tends to more popular than those in the written ones And this is one of the factor makes spoken English speech different from the written text 40 Adjuncts here can be understood that they are the pause fillers These filler words are the signals of some hesitations in attempting to refuse the requests or the invitations in the most suitable and acceptable ways Another kinds of adjuncts is the statements of appreciation or gratitude, under the influence of the hierarchical relationship, the participants feel the pressure from the interlocutors and the social distance make the students felt confusing and found the situations given in the survey questionnaires and role-play so challenging to refuse Refusals with the statements of empathy also represent the refusers understand and feel what the addresser is experiencing when they receive a refusal The last type of adjunct is the statements of positive meaning show the strategies that relieve the feelings of disappointment from the interlucutors when they cannot receive the acceptance or agreement from the others 4.4 Discussion An overall point of view from the analysis of the preliminary results can be seen from the two variables and from the patterns of semantic formulas First, Vietnamese high school students utilize more statements of regret on the refusals to the seniors than the juniors They are unwilling to say "NO" or hesitate to say in such direct ways Vietnam is an Asian country, so Asian culture deeply affects Vietnamese lifestyle and behavior This means that the student felt sorry for what they refuse and afraid of somewhat like face - threatening and try to keep the face-savings of the conversation partners It can be listed from the questionnaire the category of statements of regret are: "Sorry", “I’m sorry…”, " I'm so sorry" , “I’m afraid that…” In terms of excuse/reason/explanation, the more refusals for the intimate are delivered than those who are the acquaintance and stranger This is a proof for what is called the value of face in the English speaking and Vietnamese cultures According to Nguyen Thi Phuong Mai (2006), it is namely "though speaking in English, refusals reflected traditional Vietnamese culture, in which people tend to be more careful about the way they refuse" 41 In terms of social distance, Vietnamese high school students employed higher figures for intimates This might be because Vietnamese people in general and high school students in particular were very careful when they refused their intimates The culture of Vietnam places a high value on intimacy between friends and relatives The desire to achieve harmony between the self and the non-self remains an essential preoccupation of the Vietnamese in interpersonal relations Thus the Vietnamese high school student participants tend to use more careful speech acts of refusals to intimates The number of statements of excuse/reason/explanation in the participants' refusals to strangers when compared with intimates and acquaintances are the least That means strangers are considered to be distanced It is verified by many previous studies that this concept is similar to other English speaking countries like Australia and America They not care for the feelings of the strangers as much as for their intimates and acquaintances that are in close-knit and long-term relationship with them Here, the statement of principle which is considered established regulations that are valid over an extended period of time was not used to refuse the strangers Although this principle , for example " I never business with friends" may be used to refuse an offer to collaborate with a friend in business, should be employed to respond to the situation of giving a lift to an old lady However, none of the refusal from both DCT and role-play contains this principle Students' lacking of vocabulary and language patterns may be an explanation for this matter Another factor is the culture practice In most refusals, especially for the higher status people, students used many addressing terms like " teacher", "lady", "dear", "mum" These terms are the signs of showing the respect and the care for the seniors It is exposed that the hierarchical relationship dominate the speech acts and to refuse such people make the students feel confusing and easily exposed to the rude behavior Furthermore, using addressing terms expresses the care of the addressee for their conversational partners, and makes them feel not much unpleasant when the invitations or requests were rejected However, this is not only 42 found in Vietnamese culture in refusing Many previous studies have shown that the use of addressing terms in refusals of the Western people is frequent and they appreciate the respect tin refusing The next matter is the difference between the written and spoken refusals The results from the data collected from DCT didn't cover adjuncts of pause fillers The expressions for gratitude or appreciation, statements of positive opinion and statements of empathy were more employed in spoken refusals than in DCT The completion of the DCT questionnaire took the participants much more time than replying to the interlocutors in role-play The participants stated that the given situations caused them much confusing because of the social status and social distance from the addressers Furthermore, they found it hard to work out the suitable words and structure patterns to write down the refusals However, for the influent speakers, they can give the refusals without any difficulty and some of the refusals contain at least three and more semantic patterns according to the Semantic Formulas When speaking English, these students feel more pleasant from choosing the right grammatical items than they in writing In conclusion, due to the heirarchical relationship of Confucism ideology, Vietnamese high school students tend to be more indirect in refusing an invitation or a request, especially to higher status people and in a more intimate relationship In addition, the students who cannot refuse to the situations in the natural way may lack of pragmatics and language competence and For the rests with a full-fill refusals, they may have more chances to communicate with the native speakers and get access to the globalization via the outbreak of the Internet in modern times 43 Chapter 5: CONCLUSION This chapter discusses the conclusion of the study, implication and suggestion for the English teacher, the institutions of education, the students and to the other researchers 5.1 Concluding remarks This study was conducted among the 10th grade students of Cam Pha high school started on March 2019, during the second semester of the academic year of 2018/2019 The study was carried out among 200 students They were participating in the DCT under a survey questionnaire They wrote down their refusals the six situations in which the people who gave invitations or requests at different status and distance in terms of sociology The second part of the study is role-play procedure This was conducted among 20 participants selected from 200 students involved in DCT After implementing the two instrumental methods, the researcher found some investigations from the students’ refusals First, students refuse to an invitation or a request in different ways but most of them are affected by the indirect cultural practice of Vietnamese people It is claimed that although speaking English but they express the ideas under the Vietnamese thoughts Second, the difference between the written and spoken refusals shows the language barriers resulting from the grammatical approach Students would be afraid of doing wrongs in grammar and structure than concerning to express a full-fill utterance in the natural way Third, the pragmatics and language competence are the concerns for learners For the students who cannot give the suitable refusals, it reveals the intervention of the first language in English as the foreign language and the sociallinguistics Students who can use English proficiently found it interesting to reply to such situation but for the rests, they felt hard to refuse in such a way that not threat the speakers' face and hurt their feelings Forth, the cultural aspects in speaking 44 English are shown clearly in the refusals made by 10th graders They were added the vocative term when replying to the seniors and relatives 5.2 Limitations There were some limitations in this study This study was carried only within 200 students among nearly 1,500 students in a public high school in Vietnam The relatively small sample size makes results only valid for the respective students and schools Also, to make the findings more reliable, more responses to the speaking context should be collected and more time should be allocated Due to the scope of the study, the research is carried out in two items of the commissive of the speech act, which are invitations and requests Others speech acts such as offers, suggestions, apology should be mastered Therefore, this study cannot give an overall view of the students' communicating ability in English Furthermore, the situations given in the questionnaire cannot cover the everyday lifestyles, so the investigation is restricted Secondly, the results of research can be affected by psychological factors The engagement and commitment to the questionnaire differs from one student to others; some students are highly serious about the questionnaire while others pay not much attention to the questionnaire The responses of students to the questionnaire heavily depend on their interests and preferences Therefore, the accuracy of data is affected Another limitation is that, due to the challenging situations given in the questionnaire, some students produce their responses similar to the responses by their classmates and some others copy down the refusals form from the Internet Role-play is a limitation because it was conducted in classes, not outside the class, so the researcher may not record the "real life" refusals 5.3 Recommendations The conclusions have mentioned some findings that relating to pragmatics, pragmatic transfer, language competence in the cultural aspects Research findings generate the following recommendations to students, English teachers, and educationists: 45 5.3.1 To the students Communicative Language Teaching is being followed in all levels of education systems in Vietnam This approach consists of the following principles: Language learning is communicative competence, learners learn a language through using it to communicate and fluency and accuracy are important keys of authentic and meaningful communication Therefore, students should make full use of chances to speak to the English speakers, especially the native speakers They need to keep practicing if they want to be fluent in speaking Moreover, students need to be active in acting different communicative patterns, they will find themselves active and involved in concrete acts in the classroom and outside the classroom In addition, the authentic environmental English speaking will help students learn more about communicating contexts and cultural practices and norms from the people in English speaking countries 5.3.2 To the English teachers English teachers are the guides and the facilitators for the students during their learning process Hence, the teachers should pay much attention to the students’ ability and interest before designing the materials for a specific lesson Since the primary goal of learning a second language is to provide fluency and accuracy in written and spoken modes of communication, so the English teacher and the learner should focus on designing communicative activities which would help to develop the communicative competence Dewey (1938) states that we don’t learn from experience We learn from reflecting on experience" That implies the teacher should create the chances for students to express their experience, their opinions in English as much as they can The teachers themselves should be master of the linguistic, cognitive, affective and socio-cultural meanings, expressed by the language forms Students can not only learn from the teacher language patterns but also can get access to the social norms and cultural identities of the English speaking countries 5.3.3 To other researchers 46 The weakness of this study is its limited participants in implementing the questionnaire and role-play It made the researcher not able to evaluate the students' ability in speaking English, especially in refusing to the situations in the acceptable ways Other researchers who are interested in the same field are recommended to implement the actions among a larger size of participants and more various situations such as an offer or a suggestion It is also recommended to use the more effective instrumental research method than DCT and role-play due to the nature of language in the real life situations 5.4 Suggestions to further studies This current research has investigated some cultural aspects of Vietnamese culture affecting students' using English to reply to prepared situations The participants for this research are the students of a public high school in Cam Pha city, Quang Ninh province It is recommended that in further researches, the researchers can carry out the research in more varied contexts outside the class, in public, where there are more real life situations In addition, the current research has made theoretical findings, so further studies can carry out this field of study by implementing activities in teaching and learning process It will be more practical and useful for both learners and teachers 47 References Tiếng Việt Nguyễn, P C (1997) Từ chối - hành vi 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Muijs and Daniel (2010) emphasize that quantitative research aims at "gathering numerical data and generalizing it across groups of people or to explain a particular phenomenon." A study using quantitative