Investigating self-perceptions of speech act performance via retrospective verbal reports

Abstract Adopting retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) as the data collection instrument, this study investigates native English-speaking (NES) and English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) speakers’ perceptions of their performances of major speech acts (i.e., requests, apologies, and refusals). Each of the 12 college students (6 NESs in U.S. and 6 EFLs in China) completed six role plays (two on each speech act). An RVR was administered immediately after each role play to capture participants’ thoughts during the speech act performance. The results showed that the participants shared the same intentions in some situations but differed in others. Both groups reported attending to linguistic aspects such as vocabulary and pronunciation. Whereas EFLs emphasized the cultural/language influences on their performances, NESs stressed the issue of politeness. The participants demonstrated a variety of multisequence steps while planning for their role plays. Although no EFL indicated satisfaction in their self-evaluations, NESs were mostly satisfied with their performances. NESs also had more sociopragmatic references, while EFLs almost exclusively focused on pragmalinguistics. This study provides multifaceted information on the perceptions of L1 and L2 speakers while executing the same sets of speech acts and warrants the need to introduce social factors into L2 pragmatic instruction for beginners.