Students’ production of openings

In this section I present my findings concerning students’ production of openings in the pre-tests. Dialogues formulated after the treatment will be analyzed separately in section 6.3.1. As the quantitative analysis concluded (see section 5.4.2), greetings did not

present much difficulty for the students, as the majority of participants used them appropriately in the role-plays. Opening exchanges are present in all the dialogues and there are no cases of opting out. Most students used the informal variation Hi! or Hello!, which is an appropriate choice considering the rock concert situation. One surprising result is that the greetings and post-openings did not include colloquial phrases, such as Hey (there)! or How is it going?, which are frequently used in the US corpus. I had expected the occurrence of these phrases because students mentioned in the follow-up study how they are engaged in activities such as talking to foreigners or watching subtitled movies.

There are some dialogues where the opening adjacency pair is considered pragmatically incorrect. These utterances contain greetings that are incorrect for the situation. They are stylistically inappropriate, such as saying Good evening! or Good morning!, as these phrases are regarded too formal for the informal encounter presented in the situation. The latter one (Good morning!) also poses temporal problems, as we assume that rock concerts rarely happen in the morning.

The pre-test role-plays offer few cases of complete openings. Extract 1 is an example, containing an appropriate greeting exchange and post-openings from both conversational partners (I use the first names of the students for a more personal account, however, these cannot identify the participants).

Extract 1:

Greeting exchange Péter: Hello.

Márton: Hi. How are you?

Post-openings Péter: I’m fine, thanks. And you?

Márton: Thanks, I’m fine too. What’s your name?

Post-openings posed considerable difficulty for the participants. In several dialogues, the post-openings are missing completely. In other instances, one of the participants initiates a post-opening exchange, but does not receive a response from the partner. This observation echoes House’s (1996) findings, which revealed that responding to an utterance poses considerable difficulty for students, even after explicit pragmatic training (I will explore the effect of the training on this phenomenon in section 6.3.1).

Extract 2 shows an exchange where Emő initiates a post-opening, but Nóra fails to respond, possibly because she is already preparing to phrase her statement of intent, which she summarizes in her somewhat lengthy initial turn.

Extract 2:

Emő: Hi! I’m a famous rock musician. And [laughs] how are you?

Nóra: Hi! I’m … I’m here … at this concert and … [sigh] I’m looking for

Hungarian groups for a summer festival. And it’s going to be on July … and, could you, do you know some groups I can … eh use on this festival?

Extract 3 presents an uncommon occurrence in the sample. Adél initiates a post-opening, receives a response, but Zsolt does not reciprocate the post-opening by asking How are you?.

Extract 3:

Zsolt: Hello.

Adél: Hello. How are you?

Zsolt: Fine, thanks. Where are you from?

Adél: I’m from London.

In a few cases where the post-openings are pragmatically inappropriate, the opening sequence of the dialogue is very abrupt and would certainly be considered rude in real-life settings. Consider these three examples (Extracts 4 to 6):

Extract 4:

Bogi: Hi! Who are you?

Kati: Hello! I’m English festival designer and I … and I’m [pause] and I’m searching for a Hungarian rock group and I could pay much money for a good group.

Extract 5:

Gabi: Hi!

Timi: Hi! What are you doing here?

Gabi: I’m dancing here. And you?

Timi: I’m an English festival designer, and I’m searching for an English, eh, for a Hungarian rock band.

Extract 6:

Orsi: Hello.

Móni: Hello. What do you do?

Orsi: I’m a eh ... eh ... I’m a famous rock star. And what’s your name?

Móni: My name is [pause] Mónika H. Where do you come from?

In my authentic discourse data, there is no instance when a speaker (whether native or non-native) uses Who are you?, What do you do?, or What are you doing (here)? as a post-opening, whereas this phenomenon is quite common in the EFL sample.

Similarly, the way Kati, Timi, and Móni “jump into” the topic in their very first utterance would be considered very unnatural and “pushy” in a conversation with a native speaker or a competent non-native speaker.

There is another discrepancy between the dialogues produced by the students and authentic exchanges. In the majority of openings in the US sample it is the first speaker or the initiator of the conversation who introduces him/herself to the other speaker, rather than asking the conversational partner for an introduction, as in Extract 7 where the assistant director of the learning center greets a new parent:

Extract 7:

Assistant director [approaching parent with a smile and extended right hand]:

Hi! I’m Jessi.

Parent [takes assistant director’s hand]: Hello! I’m Pam.

Assistant director: Pam. It’s very nice to meet you.

Parent: Nice to meet you too.

Another problematic post-opening in the Hungarian sample is the phrase How do you do?. This greeting/post-opening is used very sparingly and only in formal situations in British English and is virtually non-existent in American English (there is no occurrence of this phrase in my authentic speech data). The few examples of this phrase reveal an interesting phenomenon. First, students use How do you do? as a post-opening.

Second, responding to this initiation presents difficulty for the conversational partner in all cases. I illustrate this with two examples from the EFL corpus (Extracts 8 and 9):

Extract 8:

Réka: Hello! How … how do you do?

Adrienn: Thank you, I’m very well. And you?

Réka: I’m also… eh …[pause] … Where do you come from?

Réka’s hesitation in her first utterance indicates that she may have been considering a different post-opening (possibly How are you?), but ended up saying How do you do?

instead. Adrienn replies as if the initiation had indeed been How are you?. Then we can observe Réka’s uncertainty as to how to respond to Adrienn’s initiation: And you?

Extract 9:

Zsuzsa: Good evening! How do you do?

Feri: Good evening! [unclear: Are you?] Thanks, I’m fine. Ja, nem. How do you do? OK.

[extended pause]

In Extract 9, Feri first seems to be confused by Zsuzsa’s initiation, then realizes his inappropriate response (which is also marked by code switching), tries to self-correct and reassure himself – which leads to an awkward silence in the conversation.

In sum, students were successful in their production of greeting exchanges, in most instances presenting complete and appropriate adjacency pairs. Post-openings, on the other hand, posed considerable difficulty for the participants, who in many cases either produced inappropriate utterances or were unable to respond. After a look at closings, I will examine how the above-presented picture changed after the treatment.