tHe role oF politeness 101
ere were 22 subjects who indicated that they would like to work
with the tutor again, and among these, the subjects who worked with
the polite tutor performed better on learning dicult concepts than
subjects who worked with the direct tutor (M
polite
= 10.92, SD
polite
=
2.75, M
direct
= 8.50, SD
direct
= 1.51, t(20) = 2.482, p = 0.022). ese
results suggest that politeness strategies might have been benecial
in encouraging some learners to continue to learn; however, not all
learners respond in the same way.
We attempted to meas ure learner motivation, using self-report
assessments, to see whether the polite agent had an eect on learner
motivation. We did not nd a signicant eect. However, it is dicult
to ...