This study provides some insights into the use of speech acts by Vietnamese EFL learners from a cross-cultural perspective. It is suggested that the influence of culture has resulted in students’ common failures to understand and perform English speech acts. To minimize this kind of pragmatic failure, it is recommended that EFL teachers raise students’ awareness of some cultural issues in cross-cultural communication. Furthermore, it is necessary to incorporate speech acts into English language teaching with authentic input and lifelike communicative activities. | A cross – cultural perspective of speech acts and its application to EFL classrooms AGU International Journal of Sciences – 2019, Vol. 7 (1), 53 – 59 A CROSS – CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE OF SPEECH ACTS AND ITS APPLICATION TO EFL CLASSROOMS Nguyen Thi Nhat Minh1 1 An Giang University, VNU - HCM Information: ABSTRACT Received: 16/01/2019 Speech acts, the actions performed by utterances, play an important role in Accepted: 02/05/2019 communication, particularly verbally. Speech act performance requires not Published: 11/2019 only knowledge of the language, but also knowledge about the appropriate Keywords: use of that language in a certain situation within a particular culture. As a Cross-cultural perspective, result, cultural awareness constitutes an integral part of this important area illocutionary force, of pragmatics. This study provides some insights into the use of speech acts performative verbs, speech by Vietnamese EFL learners from a cross-cultural perspective. It is acts, utterances suggested that the influence of culture has resulted in students’ common failures to understand and perform English speech acts. To minimize this kind of pragmatic failure, it is recommended that EFL teachers raise students’ awareness of some cultural issues in cross-cultural communication. Furthermore, it is necessary to incorporate speech acts into English language teaching with authentic input and lifelike communicative activities. 1. INTRODUCTION cultural perspective, and to explore some In order to achieve successful communication pedagogical issues related to common in a foreign language, people are required to pragmatic failure in terms of performance of understand what the speaker is saying and know English speech from which teachers of English how to respond appropriately. In can get some useful tools for their teaching. communication, people not only say things 2. AN OVERVIEW OF SPEECH ACT containing grammatical .
