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TitlePragmatics of Making a Request for Directions in a Polite/Appropriate Manner
SourceCASLS Activity of the Week
Body

This activity addresses how to make requests for directions politely or appropriately. The target language is Vietnamese. However, the activity can be adapted to other languages.

Learning Objectives: Students will be able to:

  • Identify elements and modifiers necessary to construct polite requests.
  • Correctly address a variety of interlocutors when making requests.
  • Use accurate honorifics when making requests.

Modes: Interpersonal, Interpretive

Materials Needed: Photos of request scenarios in the Observation Handout, Analysis Handout, and Extension Handout

Procedure:

OBSERVATION

  1. The teacher tapes 7 pictures representing 7 common address terms on the board. These photos are included in the Extension Handout.
    • anh (male, 1-10 years older), chị (female, 1-10 years older)
    • chú (male, around your father/uncle’s age), cô (female, around your mother/aunt’s age)
    • em (male, younger), em (female, younger)
    • bạn (the same age)

The teacher tapes 4 pictures representing 4 common public places people will go to. These photos are included on the Extension Handout: ngân hàng (a bank), bưu điện (a post office), chợ (a market), nhà thuốc (a pharmacy)

  1. Then, the teacher demonstrates requests that go along with each photo. The teacher may act them out individually, with a heritage language learner in the class, or may wish to find an external source (e.g., video clip) that features the types of requests at hand.  

While the students observe the teacher (or external source), they are required to complete the Observation Handout.

Seven (7) requests the teacher will demonstrate are:

  1. Xin lỗi, ngân hàng ở đâu? (Excuse me, where is the bank?)
  2. Dạ, chị cho em hỏi bưu điện ở đâu ạ? ([honorifics], Could I ask where the post office is?)
  3. Chú ơi, nhà thuốc ở đâu? ([Address term for male who is middle aged], Where is the pharmacy?)
  4. Cô ơi, cho con hỏi chợ ở đâu ạ? ([Address term for female who is middle aged], Could I ask where the market is?)
  5. Em ơi, cho chị hỏi chợ ở đâu? ([Address term for female/male who is younger than you], could I ask where the market is?)
  6. Em, cho hỏi bưu điện ở đâu? ([Address term for female/male who is younger than you], where is the market?)
  7. Bạn cho mình/tôi hỏi ngân hàng ở đâu ạ? (Could I ask where the bank is [honorifics]?) (Note: Bạn refers to people at the same age as the speaker.)
  1. The teacher will repeat the demonstration two or three times according to student needs.

ANALYSIS

  1. The teacher writes on the board 2 honorifics “dạ” and ạ” and explain that the honorifics are used when the speaker is talking to a person who is older than the speaker. The teacher will pronounce 2 honorifics twice and let the students repeat 1-2 times.
  2. The teacher writes the structure of the request on the board:

“(honorifics), [address term for listener] cho [address term for speaker] hỏi [place] ở đâu (honorifics)?"

  • The teacher hands out the Analysis Handout for students to analyze within pairs or a small group of three students
  • The teacher debriefs, provides answers to questions in the handout, and readdresses the knowledge learned.

EXTENSION

  1. The teacher asks the students to work in pairs on the Extension Handout, creating questions to ask for direction in a polite or appropriate manner.
  2. Then, the teacher gives each pair a set of pictures presenting 7 address terms (set 1) and a set of pictures describing 4 common places (set 2). The student in each pair, in turn, picks one picture from set 1 and one from set 2. The other needs to form the request based on the pictures drawn from 2 sets.
  3. The teacher facilitates around the class to provide assistance when needed.

Notes: This activity is designed for novice learners of Vietnamese. In the situation where the class has heritage learners or mixed-level students, the teacher can strategically group the students so that the students with relatively higher proficiency are helpful to their peers. Also, the teacher can think how to have heritage students help demonstrate the activity in the observation stage.

In order to adapt this activity to other languages, teachers can consult the corpora of the language to see some salient request patterns in daily conversations. For instance, the pattern can be politeness embedded in address terms, or hedges in politeness, or indirectness or directness preferences in requests.

Publishdate2018-05-14 10:03:19