Refusal Strategies of Students at the Tertiary Level of Education

This paper analyzes refusal strategies used in emails written by students at the tertiary level of education. Participants were divided into two groups containing fifteen members each. One group received a lecture on pragmatic competence and email writing, while the other group did not receive any explicit teaching. Emails were collected and analyzed in terms of the head acts used in refusal strategies that were classified according to the taxonomy created by Beebe et al. (1990). Results of the research showed that explicit teaching had a positive influence on students since the students who were explicitly taught and prepared for the task showed a higher level of pragmatic competence through the use of indirect refusal strategies and structures that were more appropriate for the specific task they were given.