A Survey Of Junior High School Students’ English Pragmatic Competence Based On China’s Standards Of English Language Ability

The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China and the State Language Commission released China’s Standards of English Language Ability(CSE)on 12,April,2018.With the identity of the first English proficiency standard tailoring for Chinese students,the CSE plays an indispensable role in directing China’s English instruction and assessment along with the development of students’ language application ability.However,under the impact of the examination-oriented education system,ordinary junior high school English teaching lays more stress on teaching knowledge points,namely pronunciation,grammar,vocabulary,etc.,and neglects to teach relevant pragmatic knowledge such as language itself,behavioral habit as well as cultural background(Chen,2014).Such practice delivers a blow to the development of most junior high school students’ English pragmatic competence.The following two questions are addressed in this study: 1)What is the status quo of junior high school students’ English pragmatic competence?(Based on the definition in the CSE,pragmatic competence includes seven dimensions: overall pragmatic competence,pragmatic comprehension competence,pragmatic expression competence,pragmatic comprehension competence in both oral and written forms,and pragmatic expression competence in both oral and written forms.)2)What are the factors influencing junior high school students’ English pragmatic competence? To test students’ English pragmatic competence,a test paper is designed based on the CSE,the English textbook of PEP edition,the theoretical framework in the study,as well as the pragmatic competence tests existed in the previous researches.And 833 junior high school students from one middle school in Xiangtan City are selected to take the test,which aims to obtain the data of junior high students’ English pragmatic competence.Descriptive analysis and variance analysis are used via Excel.2003 and SPSS 26.0 to explore the status quo of junior high school students’ English pragmatic competence,and the difference among students of different grades in terms of English pragmatic competence.Besides,interviews conducted with six English teachers are utilized to analyze the influencing factors of students’ English pragmatic competence.The findings of the study are as follows: 1)Junior high school students’ English pragmatic competence met the requirements of the third level in the CSE,and students showed a better proficiency in pragmatic comprehension competence than in pragmatic expression competence.When talking about students’ proficiency in four sub-dimensions of pragmatic competence,pragmatic comprehension competence in written form ranked the first,followed by pragmatic expression competence in written form,pragmatic expression competence in oral form and pragmatic comprehension competence in oral form.Besides,significant differences existed among junior high school students of different grades in terms of English pragmatic competence,that is,students of grade eight and nine could meet the requirements of the third level’s pragmatic competence,while students of grade seven failed.Also,there were significant differences in pragmatic competence’s four sub-dimensions among students of different grades.2)Through interviews,the influencing factors of students’ English pragmatic competence were summarized in three aspects: social environment,including the popularity of the CSE along with the examination-oriented education system;teachers’ pragmatic awareness together with teaching activity;students’ pragmatic awareness as well as learning habit.Finally,the research puts forward reasonable recommendations for improving junior high school students’ English pragmatic competence from three perspectives,namely society,teacher and student.To sum up,this research will serve as a reference for the development of junior high school students’ English pragmatic competence.However,it should be noted that the amount of participants involved in this study was small as the participants were only selected from one middle school in Xiangtan City,and only test paper and interview were adopted as research instruments.Thus,further study can be conducted in a broader range and use more comprehensive instruments.