5.4 Discussion
This section discusses the research results and the instrument used in the study (the TOEIC and the MDCT tests).
Findings of the present study revealed that there was a positive relationship between pragmatic competence and English proficiency of fourth year tourism students. Those who attained high score on linguistics were found to obtain high score on pragmatics. This finding supports Pinyo (2009) and Khamyod (2013). Pinyo (2009) investigated Thai English teachers’ pragmatic competence in requests in relation to their linguistic knowledge. Similarly, Khamyod (2013) examined pragmatic competence of Thai learners with high and low English proficiency. Findings showed that the participants with proficient English proficiency were able to perform highly on the pragmatic test. Results gained from the three language ability groups in the present study: low, middle and high obvious showed that the participants in high group attained high score on the pragmatic test. However, this finding is in opposing the studies by Barron (2003); Rattanaprasert & Aksornjarung (2011); Farashaiyan & Hua (2012). They found that participants with high score on linguistics failed to perform as well on pragmatic tests. In other words, despite their high linguistic competence, learners may not have achieved a comparable pragmatic competence.
In addition, a difference between males and females was found. Male students performed better than females on the pragmatic test regarding the three speech acts: offering help, addressing people and responding to compliments, particularly in the aspects of ‘addressing people’ and ‘responding to compliments’. This phenomenon implied that male students had higher competence in selecting the most appropriate sentences in performing pragmatics in the given scenarios. Therefore, it can be interpreted from the findings that males are more sensitive and more aware of the patterns of politeness and social factors than the female counterpart. However, the findings were in contrast with previous studies conducted by Macualay, (2001) and Shams & Afighari, (2011), for instance. They found that females are more polite than males in cross-sex conversations. In other words, females had better pragmatic competence than males both in politeness strategies and social appropriateness rules. However, both males and females participants in the present study had been trained to be polite to customers and had taken several English courses focusing on English conversation routinely used in the hospitality and tourism context. They also had experienced an internship relating to their major study in a real workplace.
6. Conclusion
The present study employed two sets of instrument: a TOEIC test consisting of 40 multiple choice test items and a multiple choice discourse completion test with 30 test items. The former was measured subjects’ English proficiency, while the latter tested their pragmatic competence regarding the three speech acts: offering help, addressing people, and responding to compliments. Findings revealed that there was a positive relationship between the scores of the TOEIC and the pragmatic tests. The students with high level of language proficiency tended to have high competence on pragmatics. However, when considering each group intensively, it was found that the middle group could not perform well on the pragmatic test, although they scored higher on the TOEIC than the low group. It can be interpreted that having high linguistic knowledge can help students succeed in English learning. However, it may not result in equivalent. The present study also found that male students could perform better than their female counterparts in pragmatic test.