Study On Pragmatic Failure Of High School Students And Countermeasures

The ultimate goal of English education is to cultivate students' integrated competence of using English, that is, to make students have the competence of communicating with others fluently in English. This goal requires students not only to learn the language knowledge, but also to master pragmatic knowledge. However, under the great influence of traditional teaching model and examination-oriented education, Chinese pay more attention on the teaching of language knowledge while ignore the teaching of pragmatic knowledge. As a result, students make terrible pragmatic failures even though equipped with enough language knowledge, which interrupts or cuts down the efficiency of communication. Therefore, it is of great importance to make researches on pragmatic failure and take measures to reform pragmatic teaching to cultivate students' integrated competence of using English.The research adopts pragmatic competence test, observation, questionnaire and interview as research instruments, 378 students and 6 English teachers from Jinan Senior High School as subjects. It aims to ascertain the following questions:1. What's the current situation of students' pragmatic competence in high school?2. What kind of pragmatic failures do students mainly have in high school?3. What are main causes of students' pragmatic failures in high school?4.What effective measures should be taken to improve students' pragmatic competence in high school?First of all, the research investigates on the current situation of high school students' pragmatic competence. Through the pragmatic competence test on the 378 participants, the research finds out the high school students make terrible pragmatic failures and their pragmatic competence is at a terribly low level. To make up for contingency of the paper test, and further verify the accuracy of the results, the research picks up 6 students from the participants and makes an observation on their role-play. The result of the observation is in line with that of paper test. That is, the high school students make terrible pragmatic failures and their pragmatic competence is at a terribly low level. Based on the actual pragmatic failures made by the participants, the study makes a detailed analysis on farewell, request, apology, greeting, refusal and thanking which have high pragmatic failure rates.Then, the research investigates on the causes of high school students' pragmatic failure. Based on the questionnaire on 378 students and interview on 6 English teachers, the research finds that there are several reasons for students' terrible pragmatic competence: students make pragmatic failure in English under the influence of negative transfer of mother tough and cultural differences between Chinese and western people; students lack awareness of pragmatic learning; teachers' pragmatic knowledge and teaching skills are limited; the exam-oriented education and traditional teaching model enable teachers and students ignore the great importance of pragmatic teaching and learning.Finally, based on the analysis on the causes of high school students' pragmatic failure, several practical measures are suggested to develop pragmatic teaching and improve students' pragmatic competence: help students overcome negative transfer of mother tough and strengthen the contrast between Chinese and western culture; cultivate students' pragmatic awareness; enhance teachers' pragmatic competence and teaching skills; develop cultural syllabus and strengthen cultural teaching; improve the current examination system.