The Cultivation Of Pragmatic Competence: An Important But Neglected Aspect In High School's ELT Classroom

The present thesis made a survey of the high school student' s pragmatic competence. The results of the survey not only suggest that students with a good mastery of linguistic knowledge are not necessarily able to use the target language appropriately according to context, but also indicate clearly that students who have mastered the more linguistic knowledge have not grasped the more pragmatic knowledge accordingly. In other words, the cultivation of pragmatic competence has not been put on the same footing as the instruction of linguistic competence in high school' s ELT classroom. Therefore, according to the results of the survey, the present thesis examines the deficiencies existing in high school' s ELT classroom, which result in high school student' s lack of pragmatic competence. Generally speaking, they can be grouped into the following categories: teacher-centered teaching; lack of authentic input; teaching English without considering the cultural differences sufficiently; linguistic competence oriented evaluation system. As a matter of fact, pragmatic knowledge contributes more to a successful linguistic communication. Good linguistic knowledge can only ensure the accuracy of language in a linguistic communication. But it is far from enough. It is generally believed that appropriacy is the criterion used to judge whether a performance is effective or not. For this purpose, it is argued in the present thesis that it is of crucial importance to cultivate high school student's pragmatic competence and some effective strategies are suggested: task-based learning; providing authentic input; increasing the student' s cultural awareness; teaching English in context; communicative competence oriented evaluation system.