Respecting and Saving Face in EFL Classroom Discourse

This study was intended to explore the effect of politeness strategies focusing on the effect of face-saving act in students’ learning motivation in EFL classroom. Thus, this study attempted to investigate: (1) Whether polite strategies of saving and respecting face influence students’ motivation in study, (2) How they influence the students’ motivation, and (3) How teachers should exploit the theory to help students in study. The participants of this study were 30 eleventh grades High School students and 1 teacher involved. The data was obtained by doing observation, recording, and semi-structured interview. The data analysis method used was qualitative descriptive design. The result shows that all of the students prefer to choose situation when teacher used face-saving utterances and most of students showed positive impression during the teaching and learning process. Students think that when teacher used face-saving utterances, they feel free from any pressure. In term of maintaining the positive atmosphere in classroom, the most effective ways that teachers need to do are encouraging students, avoid discouraging them when giving false answer, giving them freedom to ask and answer questions as well as giving any opinions and critics in classroom. Keywords—politeness strategies; face-saving; face-threatening;