DISCOURSE PATTERNS IN VIETNAMESE ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS’ CORPORA

Abstract

It is assumed that, after four years of university, Vietnamese English-majored students of can communicate effectively and effortlessly in English. However, in reality, Vietnamese English-majored students often do not succeed in making spontaneous conversations with English speaking people from other countries. In spontaneous communication situations, although their language skills are capable of creating simple conversations, Vietnamese students of English still make a wide variety of mistakes because of various reasons ranging from lack of confidence and cultural understanding to lack of communication strategies such as vocabulary replacement, confirmation, clarification, and the ability to maintain the topic. This research aims to determine the common conversation breakdowns of Vietnamese English-majored students and how English-majored students dealt or should have dealt with communication breakdowns in terms of discourse analysis.