| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立雲林科技大學 === 應用外語系 === 103 === This study aims at investigating Taiwanese EFL learners’ refusal production and perception in English, using the data collected from a modified discourse completion test (DCT) proposed by Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990), and from semi-structured interviews. Eighty English majors participated in the study were asked to give refusals, evaluate the given responses, reproduce refusals and choose the most polite refusal strategy to refuse three invitations. The results are as follows: (1) in the production the participants preferred to use regrets together with specific reasons related to work; (2) in the perception the participants regarded the response comprised of a positive agreement and a health-related reason as the most satisfactory refusal of all, whereas the response containing a regret and an unspecific reason was viewed as the most unsatisfactory refusal; additionally, gratitude was the most polite strategy rated by the participants for refusal to an invitation; (3) in the reproduction the participants revised their initial refusals by using an increasing number of health-related reasons and positive agreements; (4) The significant difference between genders was found in the perception of the female participants who regarded a work-related reason used to refuse a boss more unsatisfactory than the males. The females also viewed it more unsatisfactory than the males to refuse a salesperson with a health-related reason. Additionally, the upper-intermediate participants felt more unsatisfactory than the participants of other levels to refuse a salesperson with a family-related reason. This study concludes by discussing the limitations, together with suggestions for follow-up research on EFL learners’ pragmatic competence of English refusal.
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