Research On Pragmatic Failure Of High School Students And The Countermeasures

The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to cultivate learners’ interculturalcommunicative competence. However, influenced by the traditional grammar-orientedteaching methods and examination system, English teaching in China has been focusing onthe training of grammatical knowledge while neglecting pragmatic principle for a long time.As a result, even if after studying English for four or five years, many students are still unableto use English appropriately for successful oral communication. Apparently, to achieve thepurpose of intercultural communication, language “accuracy” is as important as language“appropriateness”. Therefore, it is an urgent need to combine the teaching of language formwith language function, for the sake of developing linguistic competence as well as pragmaticcompetence of students’.The author chooses the students of a high school to do the research throughaquestionnaire and an interview. In intercultural oral communication, Chinese students typicalpragmatic failure often occurs in addressing, greeting, parting, expressing, thanks,compliments, requesting, choice of topic and invitation, etc. According to the results, there aremany causes that may result in pragmatic failure, including the negative transfer of nativelanguage, improper teaching and textbook etc. Finally, this paper has suggested some ways inwhich both English teachers and learners can develop their pragmatic competence and raisetheir cultural awareness in order to avoid pragmatic failure in intercultural communication.This thesis consists of an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Chapter1, theintroductory part, briefly states the significance of this study and the reason why this topic hasbeen chosen. The body is composed of four chapters: from chapter2to chapter5. Chapter2gives a literature review of pragmatic failure with introduction to the concepts of pragmaticcompetence and pragmatic failure. Chapter3displays the experimental design. The subjects,instruments and procedure will be involved specifically. Chapter4discusses some majorforms of pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure according to the results of thequestionnaire. Chapter5, vital for this thesis, analyses some major causes that may result inpragmatic failure, then, some countermeasures to cultivate students’ pragmatic competenceare provided. Chapter six is the concluding part, which highlights the point that pragmaticcompetence will not develop naturally with the improvement of linguistic competence. Thus,to achieve the goal of communication, the focus of English teaching should be shifted fromgrammar rules to pragmatic principles. Describing pragmatic difficulties as they occur incommunication and enhancing cultural impartment during the teaching process will be ofgreat significance to the cultivation of students’ pragmatic competence.