Chapter One Introduction
1.1Research Background
Almost every foreign language learners in China is familiar with English,which is the most widely used language in the world for it has always been amain course in a large portion of Chinese middle, high schools and universities.Since the opening and reforming policies, learning English has been a crucialtask for students in China for a long time. However, English teaching in Chinaused to focus too much on the linguistic knowledge such as vocabulary, sentencepatterns and grammar rules on one hand and neglect how to use the language inthe authentic communicational context on the other hand.As a result, most Chinese students always do not know how to expressthemselves clearly or response appropriately when they face the foreignersincluding college English majors. Even some of them are high-scoring studentsand passed TEM-4 or TEM-8, but their pragmatic competence is ratherunsatisfying. That is also true for junior college English majors, whosepragmatic competence is usually neglected.The English Syllabus for English Majors which published in 2000 declaredthat foreign language professionals in the 21st century should equip themselveswith the following five characteristics: solid basic language skills, broad rangeof common knowledge, expertise and be competent with good qualities. It isclear that this kind of cultivating object has surpassed the master of languagerules and what’s more, the syllabus also emphasized that teaching for Englishmajors should concentrate on the development of their interculturalcommunicative competence which involved students’ sensitivity to the differentculture. It is really a great task for English educators in China, and the presentteaching situation in our university is far away from the national requirementsfor English majors.
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1.2Research Significance
The significance of the present study can be embodied in both theoreticallyand practically.The present survey will deepen the application of pragmaticcompetence-relative theories. Based on the classification of pragmaticcompetence, the present research involved the concept of context, face theoryand pragmatic failure and so on which will stress the status of pragmatics in thefield of second language acquisition.Apart from the theoretical significance, this survey also improves theclassroom-based pedagogy in practice. First of all, for vocational English majorstudents, this study is expected to help them know their real pragmaticcompetence and enhance it accordingly. It can also help learners know to whichaspects they should pay more attention when they practice the cross-culturalcommunication. Thus, a specific method will be proposed to reduce or avoidpragmatic failure in order to train them to use English thinking patterns ratherthan the linguistic knowledge only. Secondly, for English teaching, this studystresses the development of linguistic competence and pragmatic competenceshould be in equal place in vocational colleges and derive some usefulpedagogical implications on the cultivation of learners’ pragmatic competence.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Pragmatics
It was Charles Morris that first introduced the word “pragmatics” intoliterature in 1937. While, for a long time during the study of linguistics, it wasseen as a “waste-basket”, which means pragmatics is the study of all the aspectsthat had not covered by semantics (Hillel: 1971). It was Levinson’s treatisePragmatics published in 1983 which makes pragmatics a real new branch oflinguistics. Actually, in the past decades, the increasing numbers of scholars areall found that pragmatics is helpful in the nature language understanding. Pragmatics can be defined in many ways from different perspectives.Levinson said such definition by no means easy to provide (Levinson, 1983).From the point of language user, G. Yule (2003: 4) once said, pragmatics is thestudy of the relationship between linguistic forms and the speakers of thoseforms. He believes that people can talk about their intended meanings,assumptions and real purposes according to pragmatics beyond language fromitself. From the aspect of communication, Jacbo May (2001:6) definedpragmatics as the study of the language usage in human be ings’ communicationas determined by the situation of surroundings. And if we see it from theperspective of context, He Zhaoxiong argued that pragmatics studies therelationships between language itself and the context which are basic to theaccount of language comprehension. However, no matter what the definitionsare, linguists have one view in common, that is, language in use. Just as G.Leech (1983: 1) has said, people cannot virtually understand the nature oflanguage unless we understand pragmatics: how the language is used incommunication.
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2.2 Pragmatic Competence
Pragmatic Competence is a crucial element in the communicative processbecause of its emphasis on the role of both speaker and hearer. Widdowson(1978) noted that students are often unable to use the language correctlyalthough they have mastered the rules of linguistic usage. Thus, only when theinformation expressed by the speaker is interpreted properly and absorbed by thehearer can an effective communication take place (Savignon, 1997).2.2.1 Initial points of Chomsky on pragmatic competenceThe first scholar we should mention when involve the competence-relatednotions is Chomsky undoubtedly. He put forward a dichotomy concept aboutcompetence and performance in 1965. The former means one’s potentialknowledge of a system or event. It is a kind of nonobservable ability to dosomething. And the latter is an observable and concrete exhibition or realizationof competence (H. D. Brown, 2002: 31). Chomsky linked competence toidealized speakers and hearers which therefore just like built a wall around thecity, which made the language system separate from the usage and context (HeZiran, 2010:28). Later, Chomsky differentiated two kinds of competence,namely, pragmatic competence and grammatical competence in his paper OnForm and Interpretation. He argued that, pragmatic is concerned with the roleswhich played by nonlinguistic background, such as surro undings and personalbeliefs (1977:40). Further, he defined pragmatic competence as the knowledgeof different conditions and appropriate manner of the language, which identitywith varieties of purposes (Kasper, 1997).
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Chapter Three Methodology.........21
3.1 Objectives of the Research ....21
3.2 Research Hypothesis.......21
3.3 Subjects ......22
3.4 Instruments .......22
3.5 Procedure ..........25
3.6 Data collection .........28
3.7 Summary....28
Chapter Four Results Analysis and Discussion.......29
4.1 Results and Analysis of the Tests.........29
4.2 Results and Discussion of the Interviews ..........42
4.3 Answers for the Hypotheses..........45
4.4 Pedagogical Implications .......45
4.5 Summary ....49
Chapter Five Conclusion ........50
5.1 Major Findings of the Present Research .....50
5.2 Implications of the Present Research..........51
5.3 Limitations of the Present Research and Advice........51
Chapter Four Results Analysis and Discussion
4.1 Results and Analysis of the Tests
This section includes three main parts: 1), the discussion about therelationship between English learners’ linguistic competence and pragmaticcompetence according to the results of linguistic proficiency test and pragmaticcompetence pre-test. The analysis in this part can test the first hypothesis andattach to the first study purpose closely. 2), the status quo of vocational collegeEnglish majors’ pragmatic competence which can achieve the second aim ofpresent research according to the result of pragmatic competence pre-test only. Itis a panorama of subjects’ pragmatic competence with detailed descriptions. 3), the last part maybe the most essential one in this section because it examined therest two hypotheses of the present research. With the verification of theeffectiveness and feasibility of the teaching experiment and to what extent itaffects the subjects’ pragmatic competence, all these analysis and discussion arebased on the results of pragmatic competence pre-test and pragmaticcompetence post-test. The figures in table 4-1 show us that the college English majors’ averagescore of linguistic proficiency is much better than vocational college Englishmajors (62.16 VS 54.84). And the passing rate of VCEM is 30.00% and CEM’sis 64.29%. We can say that the gap is deeply remained between the differentlength schooling students’ linguistic proficiency. While, whether this differenceis statistically significant still needs further proof:
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Conclusion
The present research is a tentative study which aimed to develop Englishlearners’ pragmatic competence through teaching experiment and put forwardthree hypotheses in advance which required testifies.This experimental research contains the efforts both from researcher andsubjects who intent to improve the pragmatic competence through teaching tosome extent. With the aid of pre-test, post-test and interview, the presentresearch was accomplished after about four month. During the process of thestudy, data was recorded and collected by different ways and producedquantitative data and qualitative data at last. Among the datum, the entirequantitative data have been processed in SPSS 17.0 for Windows which can surethe responsibility of the research.As the result, firstly, the researcher drew a conclusion which is nodifference with many previous studies, that is, student who can get high mark inlinguistic proficiency test can also be the front runners in pragmatic competencetest which means one’s linguistic competence is the basic element for his or herpragmatic competence. However, the comparison of one ’s own performance intwo tests show us that his or her pragmatic competence still have a long distancewith his or own linguistic proficiency.
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References (omitted)