An Investigation On High School Students’ English Pragmatic Competence In Xiangxi Ethnic Minority Areas

With the development of global economy,the communication becomes more and more frequently.As an important communicative tool between our China and other countries,English is becoming more significant.However,under great impact and pressure of traditional teaching model and CEE,in our country,we paid much attention to language-form learning,and we ignored the proper usage of the language varied in specific situation and culture.the final aim of English teaching should be cultivating English learners’ communicative competence in reality.Although there are lots of researches on how to improve students’ pragmatic competence in recent years,there are few researches about minority area which possesses less powerful teachers and resources and whose mother tongue also includes minority languages.To improve high school students’ pragmatic competence in Xiangxi tujia-miao ethnic minority area,to achieve the practical aims of English teaching,and to explore a set of practical English-teaching method with our teachers,the thesis will lay a survey on Biancheng senior high school in Xiangxi,mainly to answer three questions:What is the students’ pragmatic competence in Xiangxi?What are the mainly pragmatics failures arising in students in Xiangxi?And do the strategies such as strengthening the awareness of culture difference and optimizing class teaching and communication improve students’pragmatic competence?After the survey,I found that not only our students but also our teachers,don’t have a good command of English pragmatic competence nor a good awareness of pragmatics.Their pragmatics failure are mainly about the wrong responses to requests,thanks and compliments,not knowing how to response in different situations.However,after strengthen students’ awareness of culture difference,teaching students vocabulary and grammar with a authentic context and making communication in the class more efficient for one year,the pragmatic competence of high school students in Xiangxi get improved.Here comes three enlightenments:Firstly,strengthening students’ awareness of cultural difference and overcoming the negative transfer of native language can reduce students’pragmatic failures.Secondly,optimizing class teaching and providing vacabulary and grammar teaching in context can help students master the target language.Thirdly,optimizing class communication and enriching students’ English-speaking practice can improve students’ pragmatic competence.The thesis is aimed to call on students and teachers in Xiangxi minority ethnic area to attach more importance to the awareness of English pragmatics and strengthen the effects that class teaching has on pragmatic competence.