On Development Of Students' Pragmatic Competence

On basis of the pragmatic competence test and students'need analysis about the third graders of NCTC, as well as the corresponding interviews, the author finds that the lack of orientation causes unsatisfactory effectiveness in film class; meanwhile, pragmatic competence of the students needs to be improved, either. As New University English Curriculum 2000 requires that it is the main task to improve students'integrated ability of communicating in English in senior stage, development of language communicative competence becomes the basic goal in English teaching. Being an important part of communicative competence, development of pragmatic competence weighs the same.In view of the researches on the teachablity and learnablity of pragmatic competence (Kasper, 2001; House, 1995), context theory and characteristics of film and TV play, the author suggests the new form of film class which combines viewing films or TV plays with teaching pragmatic competence, which aims to enhance the effectiveness of film class and develop students'pragmatic competence by using films and TV plays. The new film course model is based on the NCTC students'current English learning situation with the goal of development of speech acts competence. The author applies the theories into practice to design the subjects and the objectives, the content of teaching and arrangement of it, teaching method and teaching model for the new film course, which features the development of pragmatic competence by means of film and TV play.The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter briefly states the background and significance of the study. The second chapter gives an overview of main pragmatic theories and research on pragmatic competence in language teaching, as well as the feasibility of teaching pragmatic competence by using film and TV play. On the basis of the investigation of the third graders in NCTC in chapter three, the author, in chapter four, puts forward pedagogical suggestions for how to use films as a course to help students develop their speech acts competence. The last chapter concludes that the use of films should be fully utilized and more efforts need to be made to develop and enhance pragmatic competence teaching and learning through films.