A Study Of Pragmatic Failure By Vocational School Students In Cross-Cultural Communication

Oral communication is a very common phenomenon in people's life. In the present era, international exchange in various fields becomes so frequent that it is quite important to speak competently in oral communication. However, the traditional English teaching in China is grammar-oriented. The students'communicative competence is often ignored in the Grammar Translation Method. As a result, even if many students have studied English for four or five years, with a relatively strong linguistic ability, they are not able to use English appropriately for successful oral communication and pragmatic failure occurs frequently in their daily lives.This paper mainly studies pragmatic failure committed by secondary technical school students in English conversation. Pragmatic failure doesn't mean grammatical errors. It refers to utterances expressed at improper moments or in inappropriate ways or manners. The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching and learning is to communicate in the target language. However, a lot of breakdown, conflict or misunderstanding encountered in intercultural communication are caused not only by English learners'grammatical errors but also by their pragmatic failure. Thomas believes that native speakers are more likely to forgive non-native speakers'grammatical errors than pragmatic failure. Native speakers tend to attribute non-native speakers'pragmatic failure to unfriendliness or ill-will.The author chooses the students of a health school to do the research through a questionnaire and an interview. In intercultural oral communication, Chinese students typical pragmatic failure often occurs in addressing, greeting, parting, expressing thanks, compliments, requesting, choice of topic and invitation, etc. According to the results, there are many causes that may result in pragmatic failure, including the negative transfer of native language, improper teaching and textbook etc. thanks or praises is changing. Finally, this paper has suggested some ways in which both English teachers and learners can develop their pragmatic competence and raise their cultural awareness in order to avoid pragmatic failure in intercultural communication.This thesis consists of an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion.The part of introduction briefly states the significance of this research and the reason why this topic has been chosen.The main body is composed of four chapters:Chapter one gives a literature review of pragmatic failure and has a discussion on types of Pragmatic Failure and the Sources-of themChapter two displays the experimental design. The subjects, instruments, procedure and data analysis will be involved specifically.Chapter three reports the results of the experiment and focuses on analysis of pragmatic failures in oral communication. Besides, it also explores those factors resulting in pragmatic failure among students.Chapter four offers some implications for oral English teaching, which will be beneficial for the development of students'oral competence and the reformation of our oral English teaching.The part of conclusion stresses the importance of putting more currency on learners'pragmatic competence in English Teaching.