On Teaching And Interpretations Of Conversational Implicature In Listening Comprehension-A Case Study

Listening comprehension is an essential part of communication and basic to ESL/EFL learning. The importance of developing students' listening competence in College English Teaching is obvious. However the present situation regarding the teaching of listening in most colleges in China is not encouraging.So far much work has been done home and abroad to look for ways to facilitate students' listening competence. This dissertation starts with a literature survey of the relative studies in the field, which indicates that students are faced with a lot of difficulties in their listening comprehension. One of their main weakpoints is the interpretation of conversational implicatures. The survey also reveals that most of the present researches are on the theoretical side or on the generalization of personal experiences rather than on empirical studies.The originalities of this study lies in the attempt made by the author to probe the feasibility of teaching implicatures in College English listening class through a case study, an effort to find a more efficient instruction model to teach listening.The experiment is conducted on the basis of theories of Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature. Through reforming the instruction model and focusing on training students' strategies and competence of implicature interpretation, the author wishes to find a way out which will help develop students' listening competence. This dissertation consists of five parts. Chapter One is an introduction to the background information about why the experiment needs to be conducted. Chapter Two gives a general theoretical survey of the studies of conversational implicature interpretation. Chapter Three is a case study which mainly deals with the construction of an instruction model in classroom activities, and the discussion based on the data analysis of the experiment. Chapter Four presents the implications of this study and offers some applicable pedagogical suggestions for teaching implicatures inCollege English listening classroom. Chapter Five is the conclusion.The findings in this study are: non-English majors are really short of the knowledge of linguistic theories; the students can and should be taught how to infer implicatures to guide their learning; through systematic strategic training of implicature interpretations the students become more confident in themselves when faced with the listening tasks and both their interest and competence of English listening increase sharply; the tasks in the classroom can be carried out through the cooperation between the students and the teacher, and the shift of the focus of class from the teacher to the students; the success of listening class lies in the skillful model designing and the effective teaching process control. Implicature teaching can serve as an alternative instruction model in College English listening class.It is hoped that this dissertation can shed some light on future studies in the field.