1. Rationale
Pragmatics plays a very important role in the process of language teaching and learning because it draws the teachers attention to the development of the learners communicative competence, which is now considered the goal of the language teaching process. In the past few years, lots of cross-cultural and some interlanguage studies in Vietnam have been conducted. However, to date the act of expressing gratitude by native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English has not been investigated though it is a highly recurrent act in everyday conversation and it has, together with thanking, important social values in English. Thus, this research is carried out to fill the gap. This thesis is also believed to make a contribution to the teaching and learning of speech acts in general and the act of expressing gratitude in particular.
2. Aims of the study
. To uncover the ways English speakers formulate their gratitude expressions and the ways Vietnamese learners express gratitude in English in the contexts under study then identifying the differences between the two populations.
3. Objectives of the study
. To uncover Vietnamese learners of English differ from native speakers of English in their expressions of gratitude.
4. Scope of the study
The thesis focuses on the verbal expressions of gratitude to the exclusion of non-verbal aspect including paralinguistic features, body language etc.
5. Organization of the study
The study is divided into 3 parts:
Part A: Introduction
Part B: Development
Chapter I: Literature Review
Chapter II: Methodology
Chapter III: Findings and discussions
Part C: Conclusions and implications