A contrastive analysis of syntactic features of English and Vietnamese in conversations in food and beverage service

Abstract

This paper focuses on investigating and comparing the syntactic features of English and Vietnamese conversations in the Food and Beverage (F&B) Service. The descriptive and contrastive methods, the combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, in which the quantitative one takes priority to analyze data are used. Based on 441 samples of conversations including 630 Vietnamese structures and 775 English ones, the results show that structures used can be realized by different forms of syntactic representation in the two languages. Most of them are similar to each other in their usage. However, the devices used to express the meaning are somewhat different due to the structure of each language. The findings on the application of appropriate structures in specific situations as well as the proper usage of English and Vietnamese language to each language type help trainers and staff communicate English regarding F&B Service professionally and effectively.