INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS: DIFFERENCES OF ENGLISH REQUEST STRATEGIES BETWEEN HIGH PROFICIENCY AND LOW PROFICIENCY STUDENTS OF ACADEMIC YEAR 2012 OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF JEMBER

Abstract

This study is focused on the differences of request strategies performed in English between two different groups of students of academic year 2012 in English Department Faculty of Humanities University of Jember. The groups consist of students with high proficiency and students with low proficiency. The purpose of this study is to find out how both groups of students differ in their strategies and what causes such differences. Furthermore, this study is also meant to figure out the role of proficiency in the students’ way of performing requests speech acts in English. The type of research used in the making of this study is mostly qualitative research though some aspects may look quantitative. To gather the data, this study uses survey research as the research strategy. The methods used to analyze the data are through purposive sampling to filter the data and describe focused group interviews transcription. The data transcription is collected from two different time and place for each group interview. Moreover, purposive sampling works well in finding wide variation or the focus of the data. The results of this study reveal that both high and low proficiency students are still under the influence of their first language. In fact, this influence does not disappear even when they are exposed with artificial English environment for a long time. However, they also have differences in the complexity of their strategies. High proficiency students tend to perform lengthy strategies while low proficiency students tend to perform simple strategies. Students also perform various responses on each situation by using direct requests, conventionally indirect requests and nonconventionally indirect requests. Based on the findings, they tend to use Reference to Preparatory Conditions as their request strategies. Although all of them are exposed only by artificial English environment, they do not share equal understanding and application of their target language. Their inequality is caused by some aspects such as lack of confidence or range of vocabularies. Thus, it shows that by being exposed with the same environment does not necessarily share similar results to the students’ success of achieving their target language. This also requires other factors such as proficiency and personal confidence.