This study focused on the request appropriateness of three EFL teachers with different exposures to the real use of English. The data were obtained from a written discourse completion task (WDCT) in 6 scenarios with different social variables. The social variables are social power (P), distance (D), and rank of imposition (R). There were 3 scenarios with PDR Low situations and 3 scenarios with PDR High situations. The data was classified based on the request strategy taxonomy (Blum-Kulka, 1989) and the mitigation strategies (Trosborg, 1995). They were rated by four English native speakers using the Appropriateness Rating Scale (Taguchi, 2009). The findings showed that the respondents preferred conventional indirect strategies, particularly preparatory
question strategy in both PDR situations. For the mitigation strategies, the respondents applied internal downgraders in both PDR situations. External downgraders only applied once in PDR Low situations but they were extensively applied in the PDR High situations. The result from the Appropriateness Rating Scale showed that two respondents got even results and one respondent got lower result than the other two respondents. The focus of the appropriateness of a
request was more on the diction instead of grammatical errors. There are two conclusions based on this study. First, the respondents modified the adjunct to head act by adding external downgraders to make their request more indirect
rather than modified the head act of the request. Second, different exposures to the real use of English can influence the appropriateness of the requests realization by the respondents in this study. |