STRATEGIES IN EXPRESSING GRATITUDE PERFORMED BY STUDENTS OF LANGUAGE AND ART FACULTY

This study aimed to identify the common gratitude strategies and reveal the
differences in the use of gratitude strategies by male and female students of
Language and Arts Faculty at Universitas Negeri Medan, based on Cheng's (2005)
theory of gratitude strategies, which included categories such as thanking,
appreciation, repayment, recognition of imposition, apology, positive feelings,
other, and alerters. The data of the study is written expression of gratitude in
Indonesian translated into English. Using qualitative design with an interview
study via questionnaires method, researchers describe and interpret the gratitude
strategies used by students. The data collected using the Discourse Completion
Task (DCT), the participants responded to 10 different scenario description. The
findings revealed that students used eight of these gratitude strategies in various
situations with thanking was the most frequently used gratitude strategy by the
respondents. However, there were notable differences between male and female
participants in terms of length and complexity when using these strategies.