On The Improvement Of English Learners' Reading Ability From Pragmatic Perspective

According to the 2004 English syllabus issued by the ministry of Education (both English majors and non-English majors) in Colleges, the ultimate goal of English teaching in colleges is to enable the English learners to use English for communication, namely, to cultivate the English learners'communicative competence. But to improve the English learners'communicative competence, we must improve their English proficiency which is the basis of communicative competence. English proficiency includes the abilities of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation. Among the English proficiency, reading ability is of great importance because reading plays a very important role in learners'acquisition of information, study and entertainment, and about 95% of our new knowledge is from reading. According to the author's statistics and analyses, in the selected papers in TEM 4 and TEM 8, CET 4 and CET 6, the score related to reading comprehension is higher than the other parts in a certain examination paper. The questions related to reading comprehension has almost 20-30% of the total marks in a certain examination paper in TEM 4 and TEM 8; the questions related to reading comprehension has almost 40% of the total marks in a certain examination paper in CET 4 and CET 6.Considering the importance of improving reading ability in English reading teaching in colleges, the author of this thesis investigates some of the questions in reading passages in the past years TEM 4 and TEM 8, CET 4 and CET 6 papers for the research in this thesis. Through the analysis of the questions in the reading passages, we know that the present English reading is full of pragmatic phenomena, and the aim of the present reading is not only to test the comprehension of the literal meanings of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and the whole passage, but also to test the special meaning in a specific context which we call utterance meaning. The study of utterance meaning is just what pragmatics is interested in.Because the present reading is full of pragmatic phenomena and what is frequently tested is not only the intralinguistic knowledge but also the extralinguistic knowledge, so the present teaching method for reading should meet this requirement. Yet most of the present teaching method for reading still adopts the traditional one which overemphasizes the study of intralinguistic knowledge, ignoring the importance of extralinguistic knowledge in the reading teaching. Therefore, this kind of teaching method for reading is not good for the improvement of the learners'reading ability. Consequently, we need a new teaching method that can be used for the improvement of both the intralinguistic knowledge and the extralinguistic knowledge for the English learners, and at the same time, can be helpful for the learners'to improve their reading ability. In view of the importance of reading and the rich pragmatic phenomena in the present reading comprehension, the author of this thesis tries to improve the English learners'reading ability from pragmatic perspective. In other words, the author tries to improve the English learners'pragmatic awareness to improve their pragmatic competence; with high pragmatic competence, the English learners can have a broader train of thought, and a more comprehensive understanding of the reading. If it is in that case, the English learners can greatly improve their reading at the same time. So, the first we should do is to improve the learners'pragmatic awareness.In order to improve the English learners'pragmatic awareness, the English reading teachers need to improve their intralinguistic knowledge, and at the same time, to instruct them certain pragmatic aspects of knowledge.At last, the author of this thesis suggests that the pragmatic knowledge mentioned above should be applied in English reading teaching to foster the English Learners'pragmatic awareness in colleges, so as to improve their reading ability.