A Tentative Study On Pragmatic Competence And Its Implications For College EFL Teaching

This paper calls attention to an increasingly prominent field of interest within second language acquisition research and pedagogy, namely, that of pragmatic competence. The present study investigated the pragmatic competence of Chinese university undergraduate learners of English at two levels of English proficiency. The study aimed to measure and contrast learners'pragmatic awareness and their grammatical awareness. The study shows that grammatical development does not guarantee a corresponding level of pragmatic development. Even advanced language learners often show a marked imbalance between their grammatical and their pragmatic knowledge with pragmatic competence lagging behind grammatical knowledge. Hence, language instruction has to be arranged in such a way that it benefits the development of L2 pragmatic competence. Based on the findings, the author suggests the need to incorporate consciousness-raising activities in the introduction of pragmatics, acknowledging the importance of instruction in the development of L2 pragmatic competence. The paper finishes with some recommendations for the teaching of pragmatic competence in the EFL context. The present study is divided into six chapters, structured as follows: ChapterⅠis the introduction to the thesis. ChapterⅡis the literature review of the study; the emphasis is on the discussion of some relevant concepts such as pragmatics, interlanguage pragmatics, pragmatic competence and pragmatic failure. Chapter Ⅲoutlines the theoretical underpinnings of the study: Speech Act Theory, Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principles. Chapter Ⅳis the empirical study of this paper, a detailed description of the research design —including methodological issues, choice of informants and the major findings. Limitations of the study are also discussed in this chapter. Chapter Ⅴprobes into the implications of this study for the teaching of pragmatic aspects in EFL context. Chapter Ⅵis the conclusion of the thesis. The study concludes with suggestions for future research. This study adds to the small but growing body of research on pragmatic development in a second language.