This study aims to investigate pragmatic transfer among Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). It examines the speech act of apologizing in American English and Vietnamese focusing on pragmatic transfer. A discourse completion task (DCT) was used to elicit apology responses from four groups of participants: 18 native speakers of American English (Es), 20 native speakers of Vietnamese (Vs), 20 Vietnamese elementary learners of English (VEEs) and 20 Vietnamese advanced learners of English (VEAs). | PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN MAKING APOLOGY IN ENGLISH BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS AT HUE UNIVERSITY TON NU HOANG MINH TAM1 TRUONG VIEN2 NGUYEN TRAN NAM PHUONG3 1 MA student Hue University of Foreign Languages 2 Hue University of Foreign Languages 3 Nam Phuong Centre for Foreign Languages Can Tho Email tnhmtam@ Abstract This study aims to investigate pragmatic transfer among Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language EFL . It examines the speech act of apologizing in American English and Vietnamese focusing on pragmatic transfer. A discourse completion task DCT was used to elicit apology responses from four groups of participants 18 native speakers of American English Es 20 native speakers of Vietnamese Vs 20 Vietnamese elementary learners of English VEEs and 20 Vietnamese advanced learners of English VEAs . It was found that pragmatic transfer was operative in the performance of Vietnamese EFL learners. VEEs exhibited more negative pragmatic transfer than VEAs particularly in Concern and Forbearance strategies. In addition language proficiency was found to affect the operation of pragmatic transfer of Vietnamese learners. Keywords Pragmatic transfer language proficiency speech act apology EFL learners. 1. INTRODUCTION Given that the production of speech acts and speech act sets differ across languages and cultures successful communication for second foreign language L2 learners is a demanding task. Because of such cross-cultural divergence miscommunication and pragmatic failure are highly likely particularly for culturally-sensitive speech acts like apologies. The study of learners use and acquisition of speech acts was called interlanguage pragmatics ILP . Although this branch flourished decades ago little has been done concerning the empirical investigation of the interlanguage IL of Vietnamese EFL learners at the pragmatic level. This study therefore aims at uncovering its patterns through addressing two main questions 1. To what extent do the .
