Australian and Vietnamese coaches making requests

Australian coaches & Vietnamese coaches in making requests to their players

I- INTRODUCTION

Nowadays in most English classes in Vietnam, Communicative Language Teaching Method (CLT) has been encouragingly applied. According to this method the role of learners is central in the classroom. The ability to communicate with foreigners is mainly learners' target. This requires language teachers to keep in mind the questions that Nunan, David (1988) raise:

To what extent does the ability to perform task X in class correlate with the ability to perform Task X in real communication beyond the classroom? And To what extent does the ability to perform Task X in class correlate with the ability to perform Task Y and Z in real communication beyond the classroom? (p37)

In other words, the more task X is similar to real conversations, the more learners are able to perform the task in their real life. Thus, bringing real settings into classroom to provide a more real environment is one of the language teacher's teaching approaches.

However, the ability to use what they have learned in the classroom in their real life is still a big difficulty for learners. My learners of English are not an exception.

I teach English at the National Sport Training Center II in Hochiminh City in Vietnam. Most of my students are national coaches who have to work together with Australian coaches in the same squads. The students have the same problem as most learners of English in communicating with the Australian coaches at work. Particularly, in sport, asking athletes to do something occurs most of the time in training. The Vietnamese coaches have found it difficult to understand the Australian coaches in making requests to players.

Bear in mind Nunan and David's question, I have tried to apply what I have learned from the subject of sociolinguistics in order to help my students to work out on their problem.

Therefore, the study aims to investigate

• How the Australian coaches make requests to their players
• How the Vietnamese coaches make requests to their players.
• What are differences and similarities between the Australian coaches and Vietnamese coaches in making requests to their players?
• What should be brought into my language teaching?

In order to achieve the study aim the following questions should be answered:

1. What request strategies would the Australian coaches and Vietnamese coaches use? Why would they be used?
2. Are the requests direct or indirect? In what extent?
3. Would politeness be present in their requests? In what way?
4. Would the social factors P- S- R affect their requests? To what extent?

II- LITERATURE REVIEW.

In order to be able to find out the answers for the above questions in the literature review the following fields should be reviewed on

1- The Theory of Speech Act

From the philosophical background Levinson (1983) gave an abstraction from Austin and Searle's particular views on speech act, in which the notion of speech act was summarized very clearly as follows:

First, all utterances not only serve to express propositions, but also perform

actions. Secondly, of the many ways in which one could say that in uttering

some linguistic expression a speaker was doing something, there is one

privileged level of action that can be called the illocutionary act - or more

simply, the speech act. (p243)

That is, people use their utterances not only to say something but also to perform actions, for example, to ask information, to make requests, to say apologies, to offer greeting, to give compliments, etc. As in Language: its structure and use ( Finegan,E., Besnier, N., Blair, D. & Coll, P.1992) speech act defined much more simply "Actions that are carried out through language are called speech acts" (p 307).

It is simply understood that in uttering sentences one is doing something, but Levinson (1983) emphasized "in what way in uttering a sentence one might be said to be performing actions."(p236). Based on Austin's theory of speech act, three types of acts are used to perform actions: locutionary act (grammatical structure and meaning of a sentence), illocutionary act (speaker's intention) and perlocutionary act (effects of act on the hearer).

For example, " Can you shut the door?" in the utterance, its locution is yes/no question and it requires an answer of yes/ no about the hearer's ability to shut the door. Meanwhile the speaker's intention (its illocutionary) is to want the hearer to close the door and to recognize the question as a request for action (its perlocutionary).

In addition to Austin's theory of speech act, Levinson (1983) summarized that The illocutionary act is what is directly achieved by the conventional force associated with the issuance of a certain kind of utterance in accord with a conventional procedure, and is consequently determinate (in principle at least). (p 237)

In other words, understanding the illocutionary force of a particular utterance means understanding what the speaker's intention is, consequently, means being able to recognize what kinds of actions performed, whether it is an order, a request, a promise, an advice, a compliment so on...

Based on a functional approach to sentences in use, according to Searle (1976) there are five kinds of speech acts as follows:

1. Representatives include statements, claims, hypotheses, descriptions, assertions and suggestions.
3. Commissives consists of promises, pledges, threats and vows.
5. Directives comprise commands, requests, challenges, invitations, entreaties and dates.
7. Declarations include blessings, firings, baptisms, arrests, marrying, and dismissing a case.
9. Expressives comprise greetings, apologies, congratulations, condolence and thanks giving.

In the area of the case study, one of the speech act directives was applied: the speech act of request

2- The Speech Act of Request

As mentioned above request is one of the speech act directives. In fact, the word "request" is understood as "directive". There are several linguists with the theory of speech act of request.

Ervin Tripp (1976) with her investigation of requests in American English, the term directive used instead, categorized the speech act of request into six groups, based on the relationship between speaker and addressee in terms of power: needs statements (e.g. I need the previous report); imperatives (e.g. give me the previous report); imbedded imperatives (e.g. Could you give me the previous report?); permission directives (e.g. May I have the previous report?); non-explicit question directives (e.g. Does this point relate to the previous report?); hints (e.g. Our boss has just asked me about the previous report).

In Pragmatics of Chinese as Native & Target language Requests, Zhang,Y. (1995) noted that " requests have been defined as acts by means of which S attempts to get H to do something. This "something" is actually seen as being "costly" to H, i.e.. Requiring of Hearer some expenditure of time, energy, or material resources (Leech, 1983; Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989)". (p25).

Helen Spencer-Oatey (2000) considers that requests are such acts that can threaten rapport but not always. Therefore, it is understood that "requests are rapport-sensitive speech acts, and thus need to be managed appropriately." (p18). That is, rapport management strategies should be concerned in the way of making requests, or "the wording of speech act".

From the point of view, to analyze speech act utterances, Helen Spencer-Oatey (2000) also notes that three features which need to be looked at "the selection of speech act components, the degree of directness/ indirectness, and the type and amount of upgraders/ downgraders". (p21)

3- The Structure of the Speech at of Request

From Rapport Management, Helen Spencer-Oatey (p23) also shows the Semantic components of Requests based on the source of Blum-Kulka et.al (1989). In the source there are four semantic components of requests as follows:

Head act + Alerter + Mitigating supporting move + Aggravating supporting move.

• 1-Head act, which can be modified
• 2-Alerter, e.g. Excuse me...
• 3-Mitigating supportive move

3.1 Preparator, e.g. I'd like to ask you something....

3.2 Getting a precommitment, e.g. Could you do me a favor?

3.3 Grounder, e.g. Judish, I missed class yesterday. Could I borrow your notes?

3.4 Disarmer, e.g. I know you don't like to lend out you notes, but could...

3.5 Promise of reward, e.g. Could you give me a lift home? I'll give you something for the petrol.

3.6 Imposition downgrader, e.g. Could you lend me that book, if you're not using it at present?

4-Aggravating supportive move

4.1 Insult, e.g. You've always been a dirty pie, so clear up!

4.2 Threat, e.g. Move that car if you don't want a ticket!

4.3 Moralizing, e.g. If one shares a flat one should be prepared to pull one's weight in cleaning it, so get on with the washing up!

According to Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper (1989), these above semantic components were categorized as follows:

Head act + syntactic modification + lexical modification + external modification

Both have four semantic components but in a slightly different way of categorizing. For instance, the 'semantic component alerter' is included in the head act of the request in the second group; 'mitigating support move' and 'aggravating supporting move' in the first category are considered as external modification in the latter. Despite their terminologies and categorization, using the semantic components in making requests has related closely to the level of directness, indirectness and politeness of request

4- Politeness and Indirectness in Requests.

As mentioned above, another way to analyze speech act utterances is the degree of directness/ indirectness. Needless to say, requests are face-threatening acts. Therefore, in the process of getting the Hearer to do something the Speaker has to mitigate threat to Hearer's face, that is, protect the "face" of the Hearer otherwise the Speaker's intention would be come off. For doing so, when "the speaker utters a sentence, means what he says, but also means something more" (Searle, 1975, p59 cited in Pragmatics & Chinese as Native and target language, Zhang, 1994, p73). It means, "the illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another". Thus, indirectness should be used in making requests. However, directness/ indirectness in requests varies in different situations. This is one of the arguments in the study.

In order to protect the " face" of the hearer or to avoid causing any offence from the hearer, the speaker should utter politely. According to Zhang (1994) the CCSARP scale indirectness shows the relationship between indirectness and politeness. In general, the more indirect an utterance is, the more polite it is since "politeness is the chief motivation behind indirect language use" (Searle, 1975, Leech, 1983, Brown & Levinson, 1987).

As a result, the idea of indirectness and politeness is crucial to the speech act of request. To analyze the speech act of request, the strategy types identified by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) normally recognised and used. It is classified into nine strategy types according to the directness level of utterances.

The following table was cited in Culturally Speaking (Helen Spencer- Oatey, 2000)

Strategy types for making requests, on a scale of directness/ indirectness

Direct strategies

1. Mood derivable: performative verb used to show illocutionary force, e.g. Leave me alone
2. Perfomatives: the illocutionary force in utterances explicit named, e.g. I'm asking you to clean up the mess.
3. Hedged performatives: the illocutionary force in utterances is modified by hedging expressions, e.g. I would like to ask you to give your presentation a week earlier than scheduled.
4. Obligation statements: utterances which state the obligation of the hearer to carry out threat, e.g. You'll have to move that car.
5. Want statements: utterances which state the speaker's desire that the hearer carries out the act, e.g. I really wish you'd stop bothering me.

Conventionally indirect strategies

6. Suggestory formulae: utterances which contain a suggestion to do something, e.g. How about cleaning up?
7. Query preparatory: utterances containing reference to preparatory conditions e.g. Could you... or Would you mind...

Non-conventionally indirect strategies

8. Strong hints: utterances contain reference for the implementation of the act, e.g. You have left the kitchen in a right mess.
9. Mild hints: no reference in utterances but it is understood as requests by the context, e.g. I am a nun in response to a persistent hassler.

According to the scale of indirectness, the above nine strategy types are classified into three main groups: direct strategies (strategy 1 to 5), conventionally indirect strategies (strategy 6 to 7), non-conventionally indirect strategies ( strategy 8 to 9). The strategies are categorized based on the use of upgraders / downgraders types within the head act. They are still termed syntactic modification and lexical modification ( Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989). It is obvious that the directness/indirectness level in requests can be recognised by the Head Act of the request.

Types of downgrader/ upgraders commonly associated with requests

(from Helen Spencer-Oatey, 2000, p26)

Syntactic downgraders or syntactic modification

• Negation of preparatory condition, e.g. You couldn't do the typing, could you?
• Aspect, e.g. I'm wondering if you could do the typing?
• Tense, e.g. I was wondering if you could do the typing?

Lexical downgraders or lexical modification

• Politeness marker, e.g. Can you do the typing, please?
• Understater, e.g. Can you do the typing a bit?
• Hedge, e.g. Can you sort of do the typing?
• Subjectivizer, e.g. I wonder if you could do the typing.
• Downtoner, e.g. Could you possibly do the typing?
• Cajoler, e.g. You know, you really need to do the typing.
• Appealer, e.g. do the typing, will you?

Lexical upgraders or lexical modification.

• Intensifier, e.g. The typing is terribly urgent.
• Expletive, e.g. do your bloody typing.
• Time intensifier, e.g. do the typing right now!

Needless to say, one would look at the above points in either using or analyzing the speech act of request. However, the social factors as social distance (S), power relationship (P) and rank of imposition in context (R) should be under consideration in the speech act of request.

III- METHODOLOGY

1-Subjects

The participants in the study were ten Australian coaches and ten Vietnamese coaches. All of them are male coaches.

The Australian coaches have coached Vietnamese national squads. Some of them still work in the National Sport Training Center 2 in Hochiminh City. Some have left for their country. Eight of the coaches have been coaching for more than 18 years, maximum 25 years. Two of them have coached for 8 years.

The Vietnamese coaches who have worked with these Australian coaches are my students in my English class. The English level of the coaches is intermediate. Most of the Vietnamese coaches have worked as coaches for more than 10 years, maximum 20 years (one volleyball coach), one of them has been a coach for about 5 years.

The sports in which the coaches specialized are basketball, tennis, track & field, swimming, volleyball, beach volleyball, karatedo and football.

2- DCT description

In the study a discourse completion task (DCT) is used for its advantages (see Appendix1, one used for the Australian coaches and one for the Vietnamese ones). DCT is a data elicitation method which has been a commonly utilized technique in speech act studies since it first use by Blum-Kulka (1982) in the field of pragmatics and its first extensive use in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Pattern (CCSARP) project (Blum-Kulka et al.,1989). DCTs can be open questionnaires or in form of dialogues (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1993). Subjects are usually given a scenario and are asked to supply a response they are likely to utter in that situation. A hearer's response may or may not be provided, which as Rose (1992) has shown, does not have a significant effect on the type of data elicited. Using DCT can collect a large number of subjects in a short time. Especially in the case of study, some coaches are in Australia (some Australian coaches). With the DCT, the responses are more valuable and reliable because a pilot method can be used. The DCT was written into both Vietnamese and English. For Vietnamese coaches it was written in both languages, but only English for Australian coaches. In the DCT there are three situations with different levels in terms of complication.

The first situation was happening at the court, where a player was asked to improve his/her technical skill. It is a normal matter in training.

The second situation was happening at the gym, where a player was asked to improve his/her physical fitness. It is a more necessary requirement for athletes in training than that in the first case (technical skill) because improving physical fitness requires more time and player's effort in training. In other words, this situation is more complicated than the first one in terms of requirement.

The third situation was happening at the game, where a player was asked to be ready for his/ her game. In this situation the player was required to show his/her best performance. It is the most complicated case of all.

From the above situations the coaches would show how experienced they are in the way of making requests to their players. Therefore not only their coaching behavior, but also their language use competence would be learned.

3- Method of data collection.

There were two ways to deliver the DCT. The first way was direct. That is, it was given directly to both Australian and Vietnamese coaches working at the center. By this way the purpose of DCT was explained clearly and directly to the coaches.

The second way was indirect. That is, it was sent by email to some Australian coaches who are not in Vietnam. With this way the DCT was piloted, and more explanation to the purpose of the DCT to the Australian coaches in order to get their appropriate responses.

For the Vietnamese coaches it was an option of their answers. English was encouraged but Vietnamese could be used if necessary. In fact, all of them gave their replies in English.

IV- RESULT

As mentioned above to find out the differences and similarities between the Australian and Vietnamese coaches in making requests to their players, the following points would be looked at: the Head Act of the requests, the use of lexical modification, syntactic modification and external modification

1-Strategy types.

Table 1 shows the use of strategy types through the head act of the requests by ten Australian coaches and ten Vietnamese coaches to their players in three different situations. Strategy 4- Obligation statements- was used most in both situations 1 and 2. 40% of Australian coaches in situation 1 and increasing to 70% in situation 2. Meanwhile the number of the strategy in the first situation is 70%, up to 80% in the second situation by the Vietnamese coaches. In contrast, strategy 4 was rarely used in situation 3 (10% for both coaches)

For the situation 3, a remarkable number of strategy 1 - mood derivable - was used by the Vietnamese coaches -90%, and not much less than this number, 60% of the Australian coaches used the strategy. Moreover, it was used by the Vietnamese coaches in both situations 1 and 2 (30% and 20%), meanwhile not more than 10% of the Australian coaches used it.

The other strategy used noticeably is strategy 5 (Want statements). In particular, only the Australian coaches used it in all three cases with 40% in situation1 down to 20% in situation 2, then 10% in situation 3. Strategy 8 (Strong hints) was used by only 10% of the Australian coaches in situation 1 & 2 and 20% in situation 3.

The rest of the strategy types such as Performative, Hedge performative, Suggestion formulae, Query preparatory and Mild hints were not used by either group of coaches.

2-Internal modification

To find out how indirectly and politely the Australian and Vietnamese coaches used requests to players, internal modification including lexical and syntactic modification should be studied.

According to the source about internal modification of Blum-Kulka et al (1989) mentioned in the literature review, the DCT responses show that no internal modification was used in the coaches' requests. The affirmative form used in the simple present tense is the main syntactic feature in all the head acts of the coaches' utterances.

Only one Australian coach used interrogative as a syntactic downgrader in the head acts of his requests in situations 1 & 2. In his words in the first case "Do you think you can play the shot in a better way?" or in the second situation "Do you think it is fair that the other team members are training hard and you are not doing your best?"

Further more, no words or phrases used as downgrader or upgrader appeared in any of the requests.

3-External modification

Table 2 shows how external modification used by the Australian and Vietnamese coaches in making requests in three different situations. The coding system of the external modification is based on the source of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989).

In table 2, 'supporting move disarmers' is the most frequently used with all 10 coaches in each group using it in situation 3. Also, it was used considerably for the second situation (4 and 5), and down to 3 in the first situation. The modification of grounders was often used by the Australian coaches - 5 for each of situations 1 & 2, but only 1 for the third situation. In contrast, the number of Vietnamese coaches using the modification is very low - 1 to a maximum of 3.

The number of coaches using the modifications 1, 5 and 6 is low at approximately 1 to 2 in three situations. The rest of the modifications, 'aggravating supporting moves' (insult, threat, moralizing), were not used at all.

V- DISCUSSION

In the discussion, all the questions to the study will be given appropriate answers based on the analysis of the above result.

1-What kinds of strategy types of the head act would the Australian and Vietnamese coaches use in making requests?

To find the answer to this question let us look at each situation in terms of complexity level.

In situation 1 (described in the DCT description) 'strategy obligation statements' was used frequently by both groups of coaches. The Vietnamese coaches used it approximately twice as much as the Australians did. The coaches believed that improving skills would concern not only players' obligation but also players' self-esteem. Therefore, they have to use self-discipline to carry out the exercise. As a result of this belief, 40% of the Australian and 70% of the Vietnamese coaches gave strong statements to their players such as using "you must, you have to, you need to, you should" in their requests.

The obligation of players themselves is more obvious in the requirement to improve their physical fitness. It is determined by the way of using 'strategy obligation statements' in situation 2 (70% of Australian coaches and 80% of Vietnamese coaches). This number shows that both groups of coaches have similar recognition of player' obligation in improving both their skills and physical fitness & have the same use of 'strategy obligation statements', especially in the situations 1 & 2.

The same number (10%) using 'strategy obligation statements' in situation 3 indicates that both coach groups have the same recognition about the game situation. It is more obviously shown in the case of using strategy 1 -mood derivable- in situation 3 although the Vietnamese coaches used it approximately 30% more than the Australian ones did. To ask players not to worry about the game means to ask them to play the game at their best. Most of the coaches requested this by using 'imperative sentences' as encouragement tools such as "Focus on your own performance only" or "play outside of your comfort zone" or "go out and enjoy the game" or "do not worry about the result of the game" or "show the strong points of you".

On the other hand, strategy 1 was used as a command, not as a request by 30% of the Vietnamese coaches in situation 1 and 20% of those in situation 2, in the sentences such " take notice as your elbow" (in swimming), or" look at me carefully and follow the way I did" (in Karatedo).

The other strategy type found in use by the Australian coaches, but not by the Vietnamese at all, is strategy type 'Want statements'. The supporting statement " I want you to ...... " used by 40% of the Australian coaches in situation 1 makes their requests less direct.

Finally, to give more options for players, some of the Australian coaches questioned their players instead of requested them directly. The questions were considered as 'Strong hints strategy' in request. For example, to get players to think about their own skill and physical fitness improvement, a coach asked players:

"How do you think you can play the shot in a better way?" or

"Do you think it is fair that the other team members are training hard and you are not doing your best?"

It is more reasonable to use 'Strong hints' in a game situation to make players less worried about their game, even though two Australians talked about game targets. It is implicitly understood as requesting players to perform at their best. The utterances were:

" It is games like this that give you a chance to see exactly what quality of play you can produce both as individuals and as a team' or

" We are not going out there to thinking about our opponents. We are going out thinking about ourselves, our own level of play."

To sum up, in descending order of quantity, strategy types used by the coaches are 'Obligation statements', 'Want statements', 'Mood derivables' and 'Strong hint' in situation 1 & 2; and 'Mood Derivable', 'Strong hints', 'Obligation statements' and 'Want statements' in situation 3.

2-Are the requests direct or indirect?

To answer the question as to the scale of directness/ indirectness in requests should be applied.

Most strategy types of request used by both groups of coaches are direct. The finding closely resembles that of Lynda Yates (2001). In the article "What our mothers can't tell us", she noted that "... on sports venues and clubs or on a building site there may be a strong climate of solidarity and directness, in which people address each other using the overt solidarity marker, "mate" and issue requests which are short and direct." (p25)

In three situations with a total of 30 'requestive utterances' for each group of coaches group, 86.66% of the utterances used by the Australians are direct. In contrast, 13.34% of the utterances are non-conventionally indirect. Compared to the Vietnamese coaches' 'requestive utterances', the Australian coaches are less direct as 100% of the Vietnamese coaches are direct. The number indicates that in making requests the Vietnamese coaches uttered more direct than the Australian coaches regardless of the complexity level of the situations.

3- Would politeness be present in the requests?

By virtue of the high directness level of the requests the answer to the question is no. However, according to the above result a large number of mitigating devices were used with the head acts of the utterances in the requests, called external modification.

From table 2, to reduce the imposition of the request, disarmers are frequently used. Especially, in the third situation aiming to make players more relaxed before a game, prior to or following using 'direct head act' via imperative sentences. The coaches used the following sentences as disarmers to players:

From the Vietnamese coaches:

" You don't have to worry about the result of the game." or, " Our opponent is a strong team but we are not really a weak team, are we?" or, " Don't worry!" or, " The best team in the world also has some weak points, we will try to focus and attack these weak points......."

From the Australian coaches:

" This will be a challenging match for you today." Or, " We are playing a very good team today so it will be a real challenge for us."

Disarmers were also used in situations 1 and 2 to get players to feel more accepting of the coaches' statements. Especially, they were used in situation 2 where the players' obligation is higher than in the first case. Some disarmers used in the second situation follow as:

" I know you are capable of more but I want you to ...."(from an Australian Distance coach)

"You have been really developing in most aspects of your training, however I want to ask you....." (from an Australian basketball coach)

" I believe you are playing within yourself at present, but you must......" (from an Australian. swimming coach)

"don't worry, you can repair each part. But you must......." ( from a VN volleyball coach)

"You don't have to be tense on this. You must............." ( from a VN football coach)

In fact, using disarmers not only aims to reduce the imposition of requests, but also keep the addressee's face. As in the above utterances of disarmers, the coaches noted that they believe in players' ability and their possible improvement as well. Thus it is not completely their fault if they could not carry out the coaches' requests at the expected rate. Therefore, in terms of mitigating request imposition, politeness would be present in the requests.

Another finding from table 2 is 'supporting move grounders' mainly used by the Australian coaches in both situations 1 & 2, but not in situation 3. To get players to understand the requests, explanations about reasons for their requests were often given before the requests. Based on the coding system of Blum-Kulka et al (1989) the explanations were considered as grounders. It is the way of mitigating the imposition of requests. That is, it is an indirect way to reduce the threatening force of request.

Let us look at some examples from the data about the external modification used.

Eg. 1 from an Australian basketball coach in situation 1

" You can make a great improvement in your execution of this skill. To help you to add this technique to your skill, you will need to do this technique for 5 minutes per day until you no longer have to think about it. Each day I will give you new exercises that will help you get it."

Disarmer You can make a great improvement in your execution of this skill.(by evaluating his potential skill to reduce the player's obligation, also to keep his "face" with himself and his coach) Getting a precommitment To help you to add this technique to your skill,(By giving a reason for his request, the coach is getting the play commit to his obligation) Head Act You will need to do this technique for 5 minutes per day until you no longer have to think about it. (Asking the player to do the task by giving a statement about his obligation to do it) Promise of reward Each day I will give you new exercises that will help you get it Ex 2 from a Vietnamese volleyball coach.

'Don't worry, you can repair each part." (disarmer) "But you must try step by step to improve it." (Head Act) " I can help you." (promise of reward)

From the above discussion, although direct strategy types are mainly used in the requests, the use of external modification makes the request tend to be more indirect. The Australian coaches used more external modification than the Vietnamese coaches did. As Linda Yates (2001) noted that in sport context "indirect politeness overtly marked with phrases of formal politeness would stand out as cold and aloof." Though, formal politeness phrases were not used in the requests, using of external modification the coaches used politeness in terms of keeping player's face in their requests.

4-Would factors P-D-R influence strategy use in making requests?

Needless to say, the relationship between participants in speech act greatly influences use of strategy types of 'speech act of request', in which "power and distance act as key variables relating to participant relations." (Helen Spencer- Oatey, 2000, p32). According to her categories of power, in the case study, the relationship of coach- player is considered as expert power because coaches have expertise that players want to learn. On the other hand in sport context, the relationship between coaches and players is "close". However, there is the interrelationship between power and distance. Thus, in the case study, it is not obvious to see how much power and distance influence the process of making the requests by the coaches.

On the other hand, participant relations vary from different cultures. This leads to some different points between the Australian and Vietnamese coaches in making request. As being a coach, with an expert power, the Vietnamese coach mainly used direct strategy types, but less mitigating devices in their requests (giving more obligation to players by using strategy 4), meanwhile the Australian coaches used more mitigating devices to modify direct head acts in their requests. Let us look at the number of external modification used by the coaches in all the situations in table 4.

VI- CONCLUSION

As mentioned in the introduction, the purpose of the study is to help the Vietnamese coaches (learners of English) to get more understanding in communicating with the Australian coaches at work, in particular, in realising their way of making requests to players. Therefore, the study of how the differences and similarities between the Australian and Vietnamese coaches in making requests to players in sport would be a big contributor to the Vietnamese coaches' learning and my teaching approaches, too.

Principally, with the analysis of the use of strategies, internal modification, and external modification, the study result shows some significant findings, which appropriately answer all the questions in the study.

1. In sport context, most requests to players are more direct. Particularly, in game situations, requests are normally completely direct and short and no strategies more than mood derivable are used by virtue of its imperative form. It is the first similar point between the two coaches groups.
2. In sport context, most requests to players show speakers intentions very clearly. Especially, in situations 1 & 2 the hearer, not the speaker, would get benefits by performing the acts. Obligation statements and Want statements were found the most suitable strategies for the requests by giving statements. This is the second similar point between the two coaches groups.
3. The third similar point between them is using disarmer as external modification in order to reduce the imposition of their requests. Especially, in a game situation, disarmers are used by both coaches groups. Even in situations 1 & 2 it is used similarly.
4. The fourth similar point is not using internal modification in their requests. It indicates that they both recognise the high directness level of requests in sport context, that politeness level is not of much concern in the context.
5. However, the low use of other external modification (grounder, getting precommitment, promise of reward) by the Vietnamese coaches makes the group different from the Australian one in making their requests. Grounders used as explanations to requests by the Australian coaches, make their requests more clear and understandable to players.
6. In general, the Vietnamese coaches are more direct than the Australian coaches in terms of directness level in making requests. Even though power and distance factors do not make a big impact on making requests in sporting context, using less external modification of the Vietnamese group implies their concern on coach's power over players.

Finally, the findings would give very real evidence to my students in the classroom. Bringing real settings like the study into the classroom would be challenging not only to teachers, but also to learners. However, like a game, the more challenging it is, the more improvement the players are likely to gain.