II. Assessment of Interviewee’s Language Abilities In order to assess the English language abilities, we need to take the four major
4. Pragmatics
he is actually is from Beijing. So that’s cool but, you know, we tend to see each other a lot.”
In example (10), I asked Ying whether she had any chance to speak Chinese here in the States, since I had learned that she was the only Chinese student in her program. Although she did not give me an explicit yes or no, she told me that she had met another Chinese peer at school. Since she mentioned that they met up often, I understood that she definitely had the opportunity to speak her mother tongue.
The Social Context. The social context includes information about the
relationships between the speakers and their roles (Mancilla-Martinez, 2015).
Example (11): Thanks for having me.
Example (12): It’s my pleasure to be here.
Before starting the conversation, I greeted Ying and asked her permission to record the interview. She responded with the sentence in example (11). And when the conversation came to an end, I thanked Ying again for her cooperation. She responded with the sentence in example (12). I think these utterances reflected a sense of politeness in my participant. This impressed me a lot because I had learned most English Language Learners (ELLs) would omit such
pleasantries, which make them sound ‘rude’. However, Ying did a good job in the social context.
2). Maxim of Conversation. According to Grice, when interpreting an utterance of a sentence, the speaker has complied with a number of principles ensuring that conversation is a cooperative activity. And he called the principles “Maxim of Conversation” (Spector, 2013). Specifically speaking, there are four maxims.
The Maxim of Quality. Maxim of quality requires the speaker to not say something unless one believes it is true, based on adequate evidence (Mancilla-Martinez, 2015).
Example (13): “Yeah, between English and Chinese, I think, is, the differences is not too obvious, you know. ……So I think there isn’t much difference between English and Chinese.”
In example (13), when I asked Ying about the differences between Chinese and English languages, she told me that there isn’t much of a difference between the two. As a future ELL teacher, I know this is definitely not true since there are obviously huge differences between these two languages in terms of phonology, semantics, grammar etc. Consequently, in example (13), Ying violated the maxim of quality.
The Maxim of Relevance. Maxim of relevance suggests the speaker should not convey
any information that is not relevant in the context (Mancilla-Martinez, 2015).
Example (14): “Actually I have a favorite professor or teacher back in my college,
undergraduate, ah he was like, he was born in Texas. He basically taught us British and American culture, which requires a lot of, you know, history learning. So, and ah, how am I going to describe the class?”
In example (14), when I asked Ying to describe an English class in China, she uttered 97 words before talking about what was going on in class. However, as stated before, she quickly recognized her mistakes and went back on topic. I think the main reason that caused the mistake in example (14) was Ying’s Chinese mode of thinking. English tends to stick to the point at the very beginning of the speech, offering a straight and frank theme of the speech before
proceeding on to present the relevant details and accompany. Chinese, on the other hand, will present the relative information in great detail before hitting upon the theme, is abound in expressions with a long head with a short ending (Guo, 2008). For Chinese speakers like Ying, they prefer to introduce the most important idea at the very end of the speech. Thus, there is no
wonder why Ying intentionally spoke a lot before stating her main argument, which caused redundancies and increased the possibility of being off topic.
The Maxim of Quantity. Maxim of quantity advises that the speaker should provide as
much information as needed given the conversation’s goal, and no more information than what is needed (Mancilla-Martinez, 2015).
Example (15): “Yeah, my name is Y and my English name is Fiona. I am a first year MTI student. Yep.”
In example (15), I invited Ying to introduce herself in detail, since it was our first meeting.
However, the response she provided was simple and not detailed at all. And I had to ask one more time for her to give more information about herself. Here, instead of considering Ying’s answer as a violation of the maxim of quantity, I think she was just nervous or shy, since it was our first meeting after all. In most of the circumstances, she provided proper length of answers and did a good job in adhering to the maxim of quantity.
The Maxim of Manner. Maxim of manner instructs speakers to express themselves in
an orderly way (Mancilla-Martinez, 2015). Ambiguity should be avoided.
Example (16): “In the first half of the class, we were divided into like two groups, ah four groups, ah two groups, sorry. And ah, in the first ten minutes, the first half, the first group is, you know, they are going to stand outside of the classroom.
And he want us to taught, you know, to the other half of the class. And after ten minutes, the group which is outside, there are going to come back and the second group which they listened what my teacher taught them, are going to teach what they learned to the other students, you know, which are outside when the teacher is talking.”
In example (16), when Ying told me what was happening in her English class, she firstly went back and forth about the size of the groups, then gave an unclear picture of the stages of the class. Because of her inconsistent delivering, I had to run the recording several times to
understand what the class was like. Ying’s language was very confusing, therefore she violated the maxim of manner.
III. Assessment of the Learner’s Current Stage of Second Language Acquisition