An Investigation of Indonesian EFL Learners' Application of Strategies in Disagreeing Using English

Abstract

The current study aims at investigating Indonesian EFL learners? strategies in expressing disagreement using English. In attempt to achieve the goal, 100 English Department students of Satya Wacana Christian University were invited to participate in this study. The participants were given a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) modified from studies by Takahashi and Beebe (1993) and Guodong and Jing (2005). The data obtained through this test were analyzed based on taxonomy of disagreement strategies by Muntigl (1995). The data was described in quantitatively. This study is important because disagreement is perceived as a face-threatening act (FTA). The findings revealed the tendency of IEFL learners to mitigate FTA by using counterclaim as the most employed disagreement strategy by Indonesian EFL (IEFL) learners. Based on the findings of this study, a course about pragmatic understanding is suggested to offer in English Department in attempt to create more awareness of the students in speech acts realization, especially disagreement. Hopefully the findings of this study would provide additional information about strategies employed by IEFLlearners in expressing disagreement.