Research On The Interlanguage Pragmatic Competence Of English Learners In China

Interlanguage pragmatics is a branch of pragmatics, which is originated in the early1980s. It is an interdisciplinary subject between pragmatics and second languageacquisition. It studies the pragmatic features and patterns of the target language and thepragmatic competence development of the target language. The realization of it ispresented by language learners speech acts. At present, the researches abroad havemade great achievements, but there are a few researches at home, mainly focusing onlanguage awareness, rather than pragmatic competence development and pragmaticproduction. Therefore, the researches on learners interlanguage pragmatic competenceand language production are necessary.This thesis chooses the69English major freshmen as well as English major juniorscoming from the School of Foreign Languages in Harbin Institute of Technology, andthe questionnaire and discourse completion test as research instruments. It chooses thespeech acts that happens in our daily life to make a research about pragmaticcomprehension and pragmatic production, aiming to study the three questions:1. What is the general level of the English major students (HIT)interlanguage pragmatic competence?2. Is there any relationship between interlanguage pragmatic competence andlanguage proficiency within two groups of subjects, that is to say, whetherlanguage proficiency decides the pragmatic competence?3. Are there any differences in the interlanguage pragmatic strategiesemployed by the two groups?The findings are1. The general level of the English major students (HIT)interlanguage pragmatic competence is above the passing line, but there are certainpragmatic failures when performing the speech acts, which is influenced by their mothertongue.2. There is a correlation between interlanguage pragmatic competence and language proficiency, which means that the students who have a high level of languageproficiency have a high interlanguage pragmatic competence.3. There are somedifferences in the interlanguage pragmatic strategies employed by the two groups. Thejuniors use a wider range of strategies and use them more frequently and appropriatelythan the freshmen do.