A Study On Pragmatic Presupposition In The Materials Of CET4 Listening Tests

Listening is an important language skill. It is also a significant indicator which measuring one’s comprehensive language proficiency. Listening plays an increasingly significant role in English test papers and it makes up certain proportion in CET4 and CET6. In the traditional way of analyzing English listening tests, teachers always pay more attention to the importance of words, phrases or sentences, rather than the importance of language theories.Pragmatic presupposition is a sort of pragmatic inference. In listening conversations, in order to express idea successfully, the speaker will integrate the special words, phrases and structures with the potential presupposition. The process of listening comprehension is to infer the real meaning from the dialogue, then make the accurate judgment and choice. Therefore, pragmatic presupposition should be considered as the guide for analyzing English listening tests.The thesis introduces the theories of pragmatic presupposition in the first place, then according to these theories and the classification of the materials the author analyzes some examples in listening comprehension parts of CET4(2006-2014). According to the methods of descriptive analysis,case study and statistic analysis, the author aims to answer the following three questions: 1) What type of pragmatic presupposition is the most common one in listening comprehension? 2) What types of listening questions, in which pragmatic presuppositions often appear? 3) What are the strategies or suggestions the author wants to provide for English listening learning and teaching?The analysis shows that there is an intimate relationship between pragmatic presupposition and listening comprehension. Therefore, the author analyzes listening comprehension in CET4 through pragmatic presupposition, and puts up with some useful suggestions to improve the listening ability. It is hoped that this study can help students and teachers pay more attention to the application of pragmatic presupposition in English listening tests and improve their listening ability.