A Contrastive Study On The Speech Act Of Chinese Invitation Made By Foreign Students

The speech act of invitation is much frequently used in our daily life. The improper invitation will lead to the obstacle to communication.Through questionnaire supplemented by interview, this paper investigates the invitation of foreign students, and then makes a comparison with that of native speakers. Results show that:(1) With the improving of their Chinese levels, foreign students are gradually close to native speakers in choosing the invitation tactics and words. But the invitation of foreign students still show two characteristics of L2 learners: the strategies they used are not so abundant as native Chinese; there are some pragmatic errors in the usage of specific strategies.(2) The foreign students at low and high Chinese levels all have chosen different invitation tactics according to the different situation, and all have noticed the influence of social power and distance.According to the research, it is believed that teachers should take both semantic rules and pragmatic principles into account while teaching. The learners are encouraged to take the advantage of the environment and promote intercourse with the native speakers, so as to improve their communicative competence and pragmatic competence.