Compliment Strategies for College Learners of English: Situations, Preferences, and Structures

Shim Jaehwang (심재황)

Compliment Strategies for College Learners of English: Situations, Preferences, and Structures

Modern English Education
Abbr : MEESO
2012, 13(4), pp.47-66
Publisher : The Modern English Education Society
Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Language Teaching

Shim Jaehwang ¹

¹중앙대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the understanding or degree of compliment strategies for college learners of English in different situations. 75 college students who studied Practical English course at a university in Korea responded to the compliment questionnaires of ten items. First, the self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) displayed students’ perception of compliment responses. The results of the SAQ test showed that female group produced more affirmative and intimate attitude towards the compliment situations than that of male. Second, the discourse completion test (DCT) demonstrated students’ expression on compliment in another ten different situations. In the use of parts of speech, students used verb ‘be’ for more than half ratio (57.7%), adjectives ‘good’ for almost half percent (45.7%), and adverbs ‘very’ for almost half percent (54.1%). Third, the DCT results also indicated the positions of adverb for intensifiers. In the use of stylistic structures, students chose NP be AD ADJ (67.8%) followed by S AD v NP and PRO be AD (a) ADJ NP. Fourth, acceptance (65.9%) was most frequently in the four types of response strategies. The findings will contribute to understanding of styles of compliment and realizing instructions of compliment for college learners of English.

KEYWORDS

compliment strategy, self-assessment questionnaire(SAQ), discourse completion test(DCT)

Citation status

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