Exploring Request Emails From Students to Faculty: A Case of Vietnamese EFL Learners

This study investigates the act of requests in email communication between students and faculty within the Vietnamese university context. The data consists of 298 emails, collected from 149 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at a public university in southern Vietnam over three consecutive semesters within approximately 2 academic years. The instruments included two situations ranging from low to high imposition. The data were analyzed using the move structure analysis framework proposed by Chen (2015) . Meanwhile, some new categories were also developed based on the collected data. The results indicate that the emails elicited in both situations were quite similar in terms of concrete subjects, informal openings, and formal closings. It was interesting to observe a mismatch in the level of formality between the opening and closing remarks. Request strategies and request support differed greatly from low- to high-imposition situations. Direct strategies in combination with supportive moves including apology and commitment were more common in low-imposition requests while indirect strategies coupled with such supportive moves as gratitude and seeking alternative solutions were predominant in high-imposition requests. The study contributes to the understanding of linguistic characteristics in student–faculty email communication while offering pedagogical implications for EFL contexts. The study also provides insights into the current state of pragmatic research in East and Southeast Asia.