This study compares the effect of deductive and inductive instruction to increase Korean language learner's expressional and strategical competence in refusal speech act situation after instructing the learners in each method. The existing studies in ...
This study compares the effect of deductive and inductive instruction to increase Korean language learner's expressional and strategical competence in refusal speech act situation after instructing the learners in each method. The existing studies in speech act have supported the effect of explicit pedagogical methodology through experiments. In this study, based on those existing researches, we selected the deductive and inductive instructions that considering explicit instruction as the prerequisite. For detailed definition of the deductive and inductive condition, we applied the Decoo(1996)'s method in this study.
We tried to answer four research questions throughout the study, and made hypotheses in terms of definition of the learners, refusal speech act competence and strategical aspect.
The first question asked was weather the teaching regards of the refusal speech act exerts positive effect on the learner's confidence enhancement. For this question, we hypothesized that the treatment group and the deductive treatment group would show more confidence in the refusal speech act than the control group and the inductive treatment group, respectively. And such confidence would last long, and the confidence toward the refusal speech act would appear differently depending on the situation. Second question was whether the appropriate improvement in learner's refusal speech act occur after teaching of the refusal strategy and expression. To measure the learners' competence in speech act, we evaluated writing and speaking separately, and analyzed how each group with different treatment reacts. For this question, we hypothesized that the treatment group and the deductive treatment group would show more appropriate refusal writing and speaking than the control group and the inductive treatment group, respectively. The third question was if the effect of such teaching in the refusal speech act would last longer after some time. And we hypothesized that the effect of learning in both writing and speaking would last long-term in the treatment group, and the deductive treatment group would show longer effect than the inductive treatment group. The fourth question was about the treatment group's preferred strategy, which we hypothesized that each experimental group would have the preferred strategy in general and in terms of the situation they encounter.
To test our hypothesis, we divided 30 intermediate level of Chinese Korean language learners into deductive treatment group, inductive treatment group and control group, and conducted the test for five weeks starting from the pilot test.
As a result, both treatment groups show significant increase in confidence in the refusal speech act compared to the control group. There was no significant difference in score between the two treatment groups, and the confidence of two groups last long-term in significant level after the time pass. No difference is found in confidence level depending on the empathic and familiar relationship among the groups.
As a result of analysis of the improvement in learners' refusal speech act, the treatment groups show significant improvements in both writing and speaking compared to the control group. Since there was no significant score difference between the treatment groups, it is indicated that both treatment have similar effect for the Korean language learners' refusal speech act learning. Analyzing the lasting effect of the teaching effect, decrease of score in inductive treatment group slightly deviates from the significance level of 0.05, which indicates the treatment is slightly weaker in lasting the teaching effect.
However, since such difference between the treatment groups was not significant, it is concluded that the lasting effect of teaching is similar between two treatment groups. The fact that two treatment groups show no significant difference in most of the results related to speech act competence might be because that both deductive and inductive treatment groups are included in the explicit instruction, and the similar activities were conducted by both group.
Finally, to measure the preferred strategy, we analyzed the proportion of the preferred strategy among the groups. All three groups preferred the reason/evidence suggestion strategy before the treatment; however, after the treatment, the preferred strategy of the two treatment groups have changed into the apology strategy. In terms of the preferred strategy by each variable, the preferred strategy depending on the emphatic/familiar relationship do not show big difference. However, it was different in the differential power. When the power is not different or the counterpart is stronger than the speaker, there was no significant strategic difference in speech act. However, when the counterpart is weaker than the speaker, all groups preferred the apology strategy. Although, there are some variations in preferred strategy within group, in general, the preferred strategies are limited to the reason/evidence suggestion and the apology.
This study wanted to analyze the effect of teaching of speech act on the improvement of the learner's speech act competence, based on the speech act related studies like those of Rose & Ng (2001), Takimoto (2008). As a result of comparing the deductive and inductive treatment, two groups show similar teaching effect in general. There was almost no study in refusal speech act in Korean language education, nor the application of the inductive and deductive approach. This study is significant in showing objective supports for the possibility of these two approaches in refusal speech act instruction.