Review One
This unit reviews all of the thanking strategies that have been taught in previous units and provides students with corresponding exercises and activities for practice.
1. Direct Thanking Strategies
Direct thanking strategies in Chinese are linguistic expressions that contain verbs such as 谢谢/多谢/感谢/感激. For example,
谢谢你!
多谢你的帮忙！
非常感谢你能来！
If you have any questions about direct thanking strategies in Chinese, please review Unit 2.
2. Indirect Thanking Strategies (1)
We have studied five types of indirect thanking strategies (the way of apologizing and showing care will be reviewed in next section) in Chinese: complimenting, expressing subjective feelings, promising to reciprocate, supposing, and blaming. The following expressions are examples of these five types of indirect thanking strategies in Chinese:
你太厉害了！(Complimenting)
我今天玩得非常愉快！(Expressing subjective feelings)
我请你吃饭！(Promising to reciprocate)
还好有你在! (Supposing)
我太笨了！(Blaming oneself)
你下次可别再带东西了！(Blaming others)
If you have any questions about these five types of indirect thanking strategies, please review Unit 3-Unit 5.
3. Indirect Thanking Strategies (2)
The two indirect thanking strategies that are more or less specific to Chinese are by way of apologizing and showing care, which are highly constrained by politeness in Chinese. For example,
不好意思，麻烦你了。(Apologizing)
你累不累啊？还是喝点水，休息一下吧。(Showing care)
To learn more about the Chinese thanking expressions in this section, please refer to the glossary below.
| Word | Pinyin | Part of speech | English translations |
| 累 | lèi | adj. | Tired, fatigued |
| 还是 | háishì | adv. | Had better |
| 喝点水 | hēdiǎnshuǐ | N/A | Drink a little water |
| 一下 | yí xià | adv. | To soften the verb before it |
4. Combinations of Thanking Strategies
All of the thanking strategies in Chinese can be used to express gratitude independently. In addition, combinations of these strategies can also be used to realize the speech act of thanking, which was illustrated in Unit 6.
There is a possibility of combining these strategies in different ways, and the examples of the combinations presented on this website are only illustrative. When to use these combinations usually depends on certain social factors, which will be discussed in Unit 8.
Exercises:
Imagine that you are now studying abroad in China for one academic semester. You encounter the following situations (adapted from Yang, 2009) in which you should express gratitude in Chinese. The scenario descriptions are in English. Please read each situation carefully and write as many responses as you can as long as you think them appropriate. Your responses should be in Chinese characters or Pinyin (with tones).
Scenario 1:
Your Chinese friend invites you to his/her house for dinner. You enjoy a great time there. When you are leaving, what will you say to your friend?
Scenario 2:
You are shopping at a supermarket. Your cell phone battery is low when you answer an important call and the phone goes dead. You ask a person who is also shopping there to lend you his/her cell phone. After you finish the call and return the cell to the person, what will you say to this person?
A Real-World Scenario
Find a realistic scenario in which a native speaker of Chinese expresses gratitude to another person in Chinese. You may find the scenario on TV, in a movie, or other media (including online sources). Describe the scenario and interlocutors in this scenario (in English), record the thanking expressions (in Chinese characters or Pinyin with tones), and code the thanking expressions into formulas (e.g., direct + complimenting).
(1) Describe the scenario here (including the source):
(2) Record the thanking expressions here:
(3) Code the thanking expressions into formulas:
