| Language is by no doubt a tool for communication. For a long time, English teaching in China places more emphasis on linguistic knowledge than cultural elements. As a result, the majority of students experience communication breakdown and failure due to their poor pragmatic competence. Luckily, culture teaching as an important part of language teaching has attracted more attention than before. The paper investigates the general condition of Chinese non-English majors'pragmatic competence based on a survey conducted with the participation of the students of Tianjin University of Science and Technology. The paper illustrates why increasing spoken English practice does not guarantee a high level of pragmatic competence and further analyze the causes of pragmatic failure and observes the necessity of introducing teaching of culture into the foreign language classroom. Furthermore, some suggestions are provided to incorporate culture into the classroom considering some techniques and methods. The main theme of the paper is that effective communication is more than a matter of language proficiency and cultural teaching is critical to enhancing the learners'pragmatic and communicative competence. |
