A Study On The Effective Development Of Chinese College English Learners’ Pragmatic Competence Via Teaching

Pragmatic competence poses as one of the vital and indispensable parts of learners’ language competence. In recent years, more and more scholars and teachers gradually realize the necessity and emergency of cultivating learners’organizational competence and developing their pragmatic competence at the same time. While studies about pragmatic instruction mainly focus on theoretical research, and empirical researches, the number of which is far smaller than that of theoretical researches, concentrate on raising teaching principles. Few studies concern the practical pragmatic teaching and the teaching process itself. Therefore, the present research attempts to explore the effectiveness of various activities in classroom pragmatic instruction in the hope of finding a new feasible and practical pragmatic teaching model. A one-term-long teaching experiment is conducted to examine the effectiveness of the activities. A group of 58 students are chosen as the participants of the experiment.In order to analyze the practical effects of the classroom activities, this dissertation adopts a pretest-posttest pattern with an additional interview to collect data. In other words, both the outcomes and the process of teaching are analyzed, as students’attitude towards the activities and their acceptability directly affect the result of teaching. Data collection methods in the questionnaires in the two tests include WDCT and MDCT. All subjects come from the Department of Environment Art and the Department of Dress Design in Hubei Institute of Fine Arts. The experiment is conducted with only one treatment group and no control group. The effectiveness of the activities is judged by comparing the statistics collected from the pretest and the posttest. The information about students’ acceptability from the interviews is also analyzed and regarded as one important element which can influence the outcomes of the experiment.Results from comparison and analysis of statistics from tests and information from the interview give evidence that the activities in the experimental pragmatic teaching have significant effect on developing student’s pragmatic competence. Generally four types of activities are designed to suit the teaching of four types of pragmatic knowledge. Activities which can significantly improve learners’pragmatic competence include "Dialogue solitaire", "Read and imitate", "Myth teller", "Bidding time" and their variations, namely, "Blank verse", "Role play", and "Who is the friend/foe?". Moreover, activities such as "Spot the difference", "Bidding time", "Captions creation" and its variations, namely "Film director" and "Fast drawing" are on top of students’list of favorite activities.The present research is significant in terms of theoretical research, empirical research and also research method. First, theoretically, the outcomes of the experiment further confirm the fact that pragmatic competence can be taught through classroom instruction. Learners’pragmatic competence can be cultivated by increasing the input of pragmatic knowledge. Second, empirically, the activities in this experiment pose as feasible pragmatic teaching models for both teachers and future researchers. In section three, this study provides detailed information about the preparation, procedures and the groups of learners whom the activities are suited for. Based on the results of the experimental teaching, the author also offers some suggestions to make adaptations of the activities in accordance with subject characteristics and other elements such as textbook teaching, the innate quality of the pragmatic knowledge etc. For instance, the teaching of knowledge of pragmatic strategy should be subdivided into smaller units and then appended to the teaching of other types of pragmatic knowledge. At last, in terms of research method, this research is a pioneer work of exploration of effective activities in classroom pragmatic instruction. Plenty of empirical studies have been done to prove the teachability of pragmatic competence, and many teaching principles are generated. Yet few researchers have studied actual activities which can be used and carried out in classrooms. The study of effectiveness of practical classroom activities can, the author hopes, shed some light on future researches on pragmatic instruction.In this thesis, the author takes a premier exploration of effective classroom activities for pragmatic instruction, hoping that it can offer some implications on practical teaching, and at the same time inspires future research.