A Comparative Study of Two Data-Collecting Methods: Discourse Completion Tasks and Role Plays

1. A Comparative Study of Two Data-Collecting Methods:Discourse Completion Tasks and Role Plays 洪 岗 zsdhong@sina.com 浙江师范大学外国语学院

2. The presentation includes • The background of the study • The study • Research questions • The participants • Instruments • Procedures • Data analysis • results • Conclusion

3. Why this study? (1) • “Methodology is one of the most basic questions for any discipline dealing with human interaction…. No matter what else we do, we must remember that if data are inadequate, there is always the danger that the theory and conclusion drawn from them could be unreliable and misleading.” (Wolfson, 1986: 689).

4. Why this study? (2) • It is difficult to collect sufficient naturally-occurring data in EFL countries. • It is difficult to control the pragmatic parameters in naturally-occurring conversation. • DCT and role play are widely used in cross-cultural pragmatics, especially interlanguage pragmatics study.

5. Some findings on differences between data collected by DCT and role play study • 1. actual wording used in real interpersonal interaction; • 2. the range of formulas and strategies used (some, like avoidance, tend to get left out); • 3. the length of response or the number of turns it takes to fulfil the function; • 4. the depth of emotion that in turn qualitatively affects the tone, content, and form of linguistic performance; • 5. the number of repetitions and elaborations that occur; • 6. actual rate of occurrence of a speech act -- e.g. whether or not someone would naturisticallyrefuse at all in a given situation. (Beebe et al., 1985 in Wolfson et al. 1989: 183)

6. The study • Research questions • What are the differences between data collected by DCT and role play in terms of length, strategy and internal and external modification device? • What insights can be drawn from the results of the study?

7. The participants • Two homogenous groups of students who have passed TEM4. • Fifty five junior English major students in Zhejiang Normal University took part in the DCT. • One hundred and ninety two English major students from different universities took part in the role play.

8. Instruments • Role play: the 3rd part in oral test of English major Band 4. • DCT: three DCTs which require the students to perform a requestwere employed. They were derived from the role plays in the oral test of TEM4. The modification was made to meet the specific requirement for the format of DCT.

9. Procedure 1 • DCT was conducted in two classes of junior English major students simultaneously. • Subjects were required to indicate whether they have passed TEM4 or not in order to be parallel with the subjects in role play. • Time to do the DCT was not limited.

10. Procedure (continued) • Role play was taken between a pair of students. Each of them was given a card with a description of situation and assigned roles and they were allowed to prepare for a few minutes before the test. Their performances were tape-recorded and transcribed.

11. Data analysis • The data were analyzed in terms of length, strategies, and internal and external modification devices. Any part which is irrelevant to making requests is excluded. • The analysis was based on the coding scheme of CCSARP. • In comparing the data, T-test and chi-square analysis was processed by SPSS 10.0.

12. Results • Length • The mean differences in length between oral response and written response in situation 1, 2 and 3 are 7.5, 5.3 and 6.3 respectively. • T-test shows that there is a significant difference between the responses in DCT and role play.

13. Request strategies • The following strategies did not occur in both DCT and role play data: • Mood derivable: Give me some suggestions. • Explicit performative: I’m asking you to give me some suggestions. • Suggestory formula: How about giving me some suggestions. • The following strategies were favored: • Locution derivable: What can I do? • Mild hint: I’ve lot of worries. • Preparatory: Can you give me some suggestions?

14. External modifications • Preparators (May I ask you a question?) and getting a precommitment from the hearer (Can you do me a favour?) rarely appear in all three situations. • Grounders (I’m just enrolled in the university and I always get puzzled about university life…) occurred in all three situations.

15. Internal modifications of head acts • In both DCT and role play, only 3 types of syntactic downgraders (interrogative, conditional and marked tense) occurred in the requests and the former was used more frequently. • For lexical modification, cajoler (You can help me and give me some suggestions, right?) and hedges (Can you tell me something about how to ….) occurred quite often. • Chi-square analysis did not prove there was significant difference in the use of syntactic and lexical modifier in DCT and role play responses.

16. Request perspectives in head acts • Chi-square analysis also indicated that the choice of perspective (speaker dominance or hearer dominance) do not vary much between DCT and role play responses.

17. Summary • 1) The study confirms the previous findings made by Rintell and Mitchell (1989) and Sasaki (1998) that the length of response or the number of turns it takes to fulfil the function is different in DCT and role play. • 2) In terms of request strategies, internal and external modification devices, there is no significant difference between data collected by DCT and role play.

18. 3) Difference in choice of words in terms of familiarity with spelling and formality between DCT and role play responses has not been found. • 4) The research shows that the subjects have very limited linguistic devices to perform the speech act of request.

19. Conclusion • In doing research on pragmatic strategies only, DCT and role play do not have many difference. Thus, in this case, DCT is recommended since it saves time and energy. • In doing research on other aspects, especially the interactive aspects of conversation, if naturally-occurring data are not available.

20. Role play is useful in doing research on • full operation of the turn-taking mechanism, • impromptu planning decisions contingent on interlocutor input, • negotiation of global and local goals, including negotiation of meaning, when required, • how speech act performance is sequentially organised, • what kinds of interlocutor responses are elicited by specific strategic choices, • and how such responses in turn determine the speaker’s next move.

21. DCT is useful • to obtain information about speakers’ pragmalinguistic knowledge of the strategies and linguistic forms employed to implement the illocutionary acts they intend to perform; • to obtain information about sociopragmatic knowledge of the context factors under which particular strategies and linguistic choices are appropriate; • to test hypotheses derived from authentic interactions though it elicits a narrower range of semantic formulae and pragmatic strategies.

22. Limitations: • In this study, comparatively closed role plays were used in this study and they were undertaken in testing situation. • Only one speech act—request is investigated. • Only three situations are used in this study. And furthermore they did not vary in pragmatic parameters.

23. Suggestions for future research • Open role play • Native language • More speech acts • Situations varying in pragmatic parameter

24. References • Kasper, G. & M. Dahl. 1991. Research methods in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 13/1: 215-47. • Kasper, G. 2000. Data collection in pragmatics research. In H. Spencer-Oatey (ed.), Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures. London: Continuum, 316-41. • Rintell, E. & C. Mitchell. 1989. Studies of request and apologies: an inquiry into method. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House & G. Kasper (eds.), Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, N. J: Ablex, 248-72.

25. References • Sasaki, M. 1998. Investigating EFL students’ production of speech acts: a comparison of production questionnaires and role plays. Journal of Pragmatics, 30: 457-84. • Wolfson, N., Marmor, T. & S. Jones. 1989. Problems in the comparison of speech acts across cultures. In S. Blum-Kulka et al. (eds.), Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

26. Comments are welcome! Thank you!