Understanding Chinese College Students' English Pragmatic Competence

College English Curriculum Requirements points out that the goal of college English teaching for non-English major is to develop student's comprehensive practical competence,especially listening and speaking,which helps them communicate effectively in their study,work and social interaction.And in the same vein,College English Teaching Syllabus for English Major sets teaching goal for English major to develop student's high linguistic competence and deep cultural knowledge so as to use English proficiently.It indicates that the use of English in reality has been strengthened by the nation;however,in reality it is not satisfying for college students to use English during communications.Thus it is both of theoretical value and practical importance to make research on pragmatic competence.Intended to explore Chinese college students' English pragmatic competence,an investigation is conducted upon 339 college students in a university in Tianjin.Three instruments are applied which are a questionnaire,a discourse role play task and interviews respectively.The questionnaire results show:(1)Pragmatic competence of Chinese college students is not high;(2)Pragmatic competence doesn't improve along with linguistic competence,that is,there is no significant difference in pragmatic competence in terms of grades;(3)There is a significant difference among English major students and non-English major students.The pragmatic competence of English major students is higher than that of non-English major students;(4)There is no difference found between two genders.To verify the results of the questionnaire,30 students of different grades are chosen randomly to take part in the role play.The result shows those who get higher scores in questionnaire perform better too in the role play.Also,there is no pragmatic difference in terms of grades,which supports the result found in the questionnaire that pragmatic competence doesn't increase along with the linguistic competence.The interviews demonstrate that negative pragmatic transfer is the main reason of inappropriate use of English.It is strongly suggested to strengthen the teaching of pragmatic competence in college so as to meet the requirements of the economic society with regard to English talents.First,pragmatic awareness should be raised to make them conscious of the difference between Chinese and English contexts.Second,pragmatic theory is expected to be taught in classrooms.Last,although pragmatic competence doesn't increase along with linguistic competence in the survey,linguistic competence is the base of pragmatic competence,so linguistic competence teaching shouldn't be ignored.