VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG ANH A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF REQUESTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (SO SÁNH LỜI ĐỀ NGHỊ TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) GRADUATION THESIS Field: Linguistics VINH - 2011 VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF REQUESTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (SO SÁNH LỜI ĐỀ NGHỊ TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) GRADUATION THESIS Field: Linguistics Supervisor : Nguyễn Thị Kim Anh, MA Student: Nguyễn Thị Hồng Anh Class : K48B2 - English VINH - 2011 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the completion of this work, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contributions from many people First of all, I should like to express my deepest gratitude to my lecturer, Mrs Nguyen Thi Kim Anh, MA for her absolutely indispensable assistance, excellent suggestions, expert advices and detailed critical comments without those my work would not have been completed I owe a special debt of gratitude to Mr Tran Ba Tien, MA and Mrs Nguyen Thi Van Lam, MA who helped me initiate the idea for my research , giving me their enthusiastic encouragement and the benefit of their wisdom as well as his long and varied experiences in doing language research In addition, I am greatly indebted to all my lecturers at Foreign Languages Department, Vinh University for their enthusiasm, unedited useful lectures, interesting ideas, experiences, constant support and encouragement I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to Mr Hung for his reading of my draft as well as his invaluable suggestions and comments, my friends at Foreign Language Department, Vinh University, and to my other friends for their various kinds of help, big support and endless encouragement My warmest thanks are due to my loving parents, for their unconditional loves , supports all good condition as possible and their patience Finally , I am all too aware that despite all the meaningful advices and assistant helps, I fell that the study is far from perfect , it is , therefore, my sole responsibility for any inadequacies and shortcomings that the study may be considered to have Vinh, May 2011 Nguyen Thi Hong Anh i ABSTRACT How to give Requests reasonably, politely and effectively with suitable methods is not easy This research aim is to investigate the use of Requests in English and Vietnamese for communicative purposes by letters The similarities and differences of Requests between the two languages are mentioned Their practice in reality will be discovered Moreover, some structures of Requests which are used frequently in the letters are also analyzed with the hope to find out the best ways to give requests in both languages, English and Vietnamese Finally, some suggestions are given so that English learners in Vietnam can use to enhance the effect of using Requests in the letters for their different communicative purposes ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS vi ABBREVIATION vii PART A: INTRODUCTION .1 Justification of the Study Aims of the Study .2 Methods of the Study Scope of the Study Design of the Study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Overview of the Theory 1.2 Sentences .5 1.2.1 Some Definitions of Sentences 1.2.2 Classification of Sentences 1.3 Requests 1.3.1 Definitions of Requests 1.3.2 Types of Requests 1.3.3 Requests in Letters .12 1.3.4 Rules of Requests in Letters 16 1.4 Summary 16 CHAPTER II THE STUDY 17 iii 2.1 Research Questions 18 2.2 Data collection 18 2.2.1 Objects 18 2.2.2 Data Collection Procedure 18 2.3 Research Procedure 18 2.4 Results and Discussion 19 2.4.1 Results 19 19 2.4.2 Discussion 19 CHAPTTER III A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF REQUESTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 20 3.1 Forms of Requests in English and Vietnamese 21 3.1.1 Requests in Form of Declarative Sentences 21 iv 3.1.2 Requests in Form of Imperative Sentences 21 3.1.3 Requests in Form of Interrogative Sentences 23 3.2 Request Expressions 27 3.2.1 Directnes 29 3.2.2 Indirectness 29 3.2.3 Politeness Strategy 31 3.3 Words and Structures used for Requests 33 3.3.1 Words used for Requests 35 3.3.2 Structures used for Requests 35 3.4 Factors affecting Requests 39 3.5 Frequency of using Requests in English and Vietnamese 41 3.5.1 Commanding v 43 3.5.2 Begging 43 3.5.3 Advising 43 3.5.4 Suggesting 44 3.5.5 Inviting 44 3.5.6 Encouraging 44 3.5.7 Promising 44 3.5.8 Reminding 44 3.5.9 Permitting 45 3.5.10 Informing 45 3.6 Similarities and Differences of Requests in Letters in English and Vietnamese 46 3.6.1 Similarities vi ... following chapter: ? ?A contrastive Analysis of Requests in English and Vietnamese? ?? will show more details 20 CHAPTER 3: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF REQUESTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 3.1 Form of Requests. ..VINH - 2011 VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF REQUESTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (SO SÁNH LỜI ĐỀ NGHỊ TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) GRADUATION THESIS... these requests into groups in terms of forms and expressions and made the data table for groups After that, with collected data, we analyzed them and did CA of Requests in English and in Vietnamese