REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIES
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discussion of this thesis. The seven related studies discussed in this research are 1 Hassall 2003 on the request strategies performed by Australian English speaker
learners of Indonesian, 2 Kobayashi and Rinnert 2003 on requests done by Japanese EFL learners, 3 Salvesen 2015 on the comparison of the Norwegian
speakers of English and native speaker of English in making requests, 4 Han 2013 on the requests and politeness employed by Chinese learners, 5 Felix-
Brasdefer 2005 focused on indirectness and politeness in request, as well as the degree of formality and deference 6 Salgado 2011 on the requests and apologies
strategies used by Mexican college students, and, finally, 7 Rue Zhang 2008 summarized these theories on their study of request strategies used by Mandarin
Chinese and Korean focusing on four sequences of requests modifications. These related studies help the researcher as references and guidelines for conducting the
research on request acts realizations of Medical and Law students in Batam University as the non-English learners.
To begin, Hassall 2003 focused on examining the request strategies and modifications employed by Indonesian learners for Australian English speakers.
He found that learners’ linguistics proficiency level influenced students in acquiring pragmatic competence. Here the students whom have increased their L2
grammatical features tended to use more complex linguistic forms to express their intentions in different social situations. This was
shown by the using of the ‘want’ and ‘hint’ statements to diminish the force of the request acts to the hearer.
The same idea also stated by Kobayashi and Rinnert 2003 that there was a positive correlation between second language proficiency level and L1 pragmatic
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competence. They examine two different groups of university students of Japanese EFL learners. As what Hassall discovered in his study, Kobayashi and Rinnet also
found that Japanese EFL students mostly performed ‘want statements’ in making requests. The ‘want’ statements functioned as the form of request which diminished
the face threatening to the hearers due to the less force effect, thus, it was performed as a ‘wish’ rather than an explicit form of requests.
Additionally, Salvesen 2015 highlighted a slight difference between the Norwegian speakers of English and native speaker of English. She obtained that
native speaker of English used more indirect strategies and hints compared to Norwegian whom made the requests explicated. Practically, Norwegian found it
was hard to speak in English, therefore, this matter might have had an effect on the requests they made. However, the issue of the power and social distance weighed
the Norwegian on the degree of the politeness they counted. As clarified by Han 2013, in Chinese traditional culture,
individual’s position and power in the society was very much emphasized since China had been a hierarchical society for long
time ago. Hence, in requesting they had to decide the strategy they used, like employing tag questions. By contrasting the head acts of both Chinese and English,
Han pointed that Chinese speakers selected more direct strategies like imperatives, while the native English seldom chose imperatives.
In relation to the directness and indirectness of the requests, furthermore, Felix-Brasdefer 2005 in his study about indirectness and politeness, investigated
that requests were characterized by the degree of the indirectness, the degree of formality and deference. The results of his research revealed that to mitigate the
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requests force, the students of the Mexican Spanish speakers as the participants of the research, use various and complex forms of internal and external modifications.
Some of the internal modifications done by the learners in making requests were diminutives and the conditional forms, meanwhile, for the external modifications
they employed grounders and promise of rewards strategies. Salgado 2011 in her study initiated that there was a correlation between
interlanguage pragmatics and pragmatic competence of the L2 Mexican students. After examining the speech acts of requests in various contexts, it was generated
that students tendes to perform the direct forms of requests acts noted by the use of the modal verbs like ‘can’, ‘could’ and ‘would’ depending on their proficiency
level. However, the L2 students did not produce fully native-like ways of requesting. On the other hand, the L2 students frequently employed requests acts
accompanied with imperatives with politeness markers to produce mitigated and polite requests. Thus, it could be indicated that eventhough the L2 learners
possessed a limited linguistic knowledge, they were able to perform actions in L2 and minimized
the cost on the hearers’ face threatening force. Compared to Chinese and Korean EFL students, Rue and Zhang 2008
discovered that both of Chinese and Korean groups were also applied more direct strategies in making requests. Yet, it was uncovered that L2 learners employed
Blum-Kulka et al 1989 strategies and modifications of requests namely: openers, head acts, internal modifications, and external modifications. Based on the findings,
it was seen that both groups used more indirect head acts and external modifications as the requests strategies. Besides, for the internal modifications, Korean used more
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honorific politeness feature compared to Chinese. Further, Chinese speakers prefered to use neutral openers, meanwhile the Korean preferred to apply the
openers for upgrading function to the hearer. Taking a close reading to some studies explained above, the researcher
comes to a decision to make use the theory of Blum-Kulka et al 1989 on strategies and modifications as developed by Rue and Zhang 2008. The discussion of this
study covers four sequences of the requests included openers, head acts, internal modifications lexical and syntactic modifications, and external modifications
supportive moves of request acts realization done by Medical and Law students of Batam University.