Politeness phenomena in English and
Vietnamese through using imperative mood
within Thang Long University education
environment

Nguyễn Vân Khánh

Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyễn Văn Độ
Năm bảo vệ: 2010

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Tiếng Việt; Giao tiếp; Hiện tượng lịch sự

Content:
PART A. INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
English is one of the most important languages in communication. It plays a very important
role in many aspects of everyday life such as: Education, culture, technology, science, etc….
What is noticeable is that learning English becomes an increasing need for many people in
society. They study English for various purposes: for job, for promotion, for going abroad…. In
Vietnam, English is very popular and is being taught widely.
In Vietnam, with the open-door policy of Vietnamese government, English, day by day,
affirms its dominated role for international communication. English is taught compulsory in
many schools in Vietnam. Also, it becomes a compulsory subject in many universities and
schools, for example, Thang Long University. Although English has been taught in Vietnam for
several years but only, grammatical correctness seem to be highly appreciated in teaching. This
way of teaching and learning is not effective enough to provide cultural factors to make cross-
cultural communication successful. Therefore, learners do not know what to say in order to have
a contextual, situational and cultural appropriateness in communication. Even today many
Vietnamese teachers of English still appreciate grammatical correctness over appropriateness in

This thesis is structured in three parts: Part A – Introduction, Part B – Development and Part
C – Conclusions. Part B is composed of three chapters as follows:
The purpose of Chapter one (Theoretical background) is to introduce the key theoretical
concepts that the study is based on.
Chapter two (A study within ThangLong University Educational Environment) introduces
the questions the present study attempts to answer. It also describes the procedures and
instruments used to collect the data, the participants in the study, as well as the way the data were
analyzed. Besides, a tentative analytical framework is also presented.
Chapter three (Findings and discussions) presents the results of the study and discusses the
differences and similarities politeness phenomena in English and Vietnamese through using
Imperative Mood to make requests.
Finally, part C – Conclusions will summarize the most important findings of the study as
well as present all the limitations, the implications of the study and recommendations for further
studies.
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