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.