An investigation into the pragmatic competence of the front-office trainees of Valombola Vocational Training Centre

Abstract

This investigation into the pragmatic competence of front-office trainees of Valombola VTC was conducted to analyse the trainees’ competence on formulation and realisation of request strategies, to evaluate their application of politeness principles in the speech act of refusal and apologetic responses and to examine the factors that influence their pragmatic competence. Systematic random sampling was utilised to select the study sample of 15 out of 30 front-office trainees from the Hospitality Department’s 2022 academic year’s intake. Two sets of instruments were used to collect data – a Written Discourse Completion Tasks (WDCT), and a questionnaire. Data on the students’ pragmatic competence was qualitatively and quantitatively analysed. The findings of the study suggest that, in terms of the speech act of refusal, the trainees’ pragmatic competence was at 30%, a significantly low level. This means that, the front-office trainees demonstrated a lack of pragmatic competence in terms of the speech act of request responses, apologies and refusal strategy. Considering the three speech acts of request, apologies and refusal results, their levels of pragmatic competence was observed to be somewhat low, as they also indicated even in the questionnaire that they preferred using their vernacular language when socialising. In addition, the findings indicate that the trainees use different refusal responses, and apology strategies that lack politeness. Lastly, the findings demonstrate that there are some underlying factors that influence pragmatic competence, and these include misinterpretation of pragmatic implicature, educational background, low level of daily activities using English. Ultimately, English for Specific Purposes focusing on pragmatic competence was recommended for the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector in general and for front-office trainees in particular.