A Study On The Pragmatic Inference Of Female Social Appellation Of Foreign Students And The Teaching Strategies

Social appellations for females consist a subsystem belonging to the Chinese appellation system. When we use these words we must abide by two pragmatic principles, which are the politeness principle and the appropriateness principle. Due to the limited Chinese ability and cultural differences, foreign students lack the consciousness of keeping to the principles of politeness and appropriateness when using social appellations for females, which leads to pragmatic errors and impedes the smooth going of the communication process.This paper takes the foreign students studying in Nanjing Normal University as the respondents. By assimilating the previous researchers’achievements, this paper is based on the result of the questionnaire survey to analyze the pragmatic errors made by foreign students when using social appellations for females under the restrict of the pragmatic principles mentioned above. The research indicates that foreign students make different errors when using different kinds of social appellations for females. In addition, foreign students of different Chinese levels, countries and genders make different errors. The objective reasons for these errors are the complexity of the Chinese appellation system and foreign students’shortage of appellation knowledge, which is caused by the defects of the teaching materials and teaching process. The subject reasons include the negative transfer from the native languages and cultures, the improper learning strategies, the lack of knowledge about Chinese culture. To decrease foreign students’pragmatic errors, this paper investigates three sets of frequently used textbooks and finds out their defects. Centering on the problems in vocabulary and culture teaching, this paper puts forward some teaching methods. As for the vocabulary teaching, the situational method, divergent-thinking method and sorted-inductive method should be adopted. While for the culture teaching, the teacher should select the pertinent teaching content, and compare Chinese and foreign cultures to help students understand the differences and enhance their consciousness of intercultural communication. Furthermore, extracurricular activities held in a variety of forms will also be beneficial.