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TEACHERS’ POLITENESS STRATEGY IN CRITICIZING
CLASSROOM PRESENTATION
Elvira Victorina
Abstract
The act of criticizing students’ performance have higher tendency to threat students’ faces. Though criticism is aimed at giving positive input, the way it is delivered may give different result. The present study investigates teacher’s politeness strategy in giving certain criticism and its reason to perform it by observing and interviewing six participants. The results were analyzed based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness strategy and Nguyen’s (2008) classification of criticism strategies. The result indicates that teachers mostly tend to state the problem when criticizing student’s performance and use bald on record politeness strategy. The main reason is because the teachers mostly focus on the form of criticism rather than student’s face or other reason. The result of the study can be used to help teachers and student-teachers develop their awareness to save their student’s face by choosing the most appropriate politeness strategy when criticizing students.