A Case Study Of Pragmatic Behavior In Senior High School English Classroom

In the learning environment where English is a foreign language, questions and answers provide a good platform for the application of language, and are potentially influencing the development of pragmatic ability. This research is based on the lin-guistic data of16class videos and the individual interviews of the English teachers. Through qualitative-quantity research method, this research summarizes the prag-matic phenomenon of the senior English classes and teachers’ pragmatic awareness and usage. Now the conclusion is as follows:According to the statistical data, this research finds out different pragmatic func-tions of questioning aren’t given full play of. Over50%questions played "Instructive function" among the600questions in all the cases, with the least appearance of the questions playing "Exploratory function", which reflects the lack of thought teaching and students’independence. During the interaction between teacher and students, the percentages of teacher’s talk were all over50%, while the percentages of students’ talk were generally between10%and20%. Through interviews, this research finds out most teachers lack pragmatic awareness and knowledge, and seldom correct stu-dents’pragmatic failure. Teachers generally think in terms of pragmatic learning, the effect of pragmatic input in class may not be very encouraging, comparing with the long-term exposure to the target language.To conclude, this research finds out although teachers opinions about their class-room roles have improved, there’s still a long way to go before we can truly make full use of these new roles. For example, the lack of pedagogical content knowledge can make teacher practice disaccord with teacher belief. In particular, the lack of prag-matic knowledge can not only reduce the efficiency of classroom interaction, but also have negative influence on teachers’long-term career development. Therefore, it’s necessary to strengthen teacher education from pragmatic aspect. Only when teachers themselves raise their pragmatic awareness, as well as possess abundant pragmatic knowledge and experience, can we take good advantage of questions and answers in class and gradually permeate pragmatic teaching.