Evaluating New Era Interactive English-Viewing, Listening&Speaking From The Perspective Of Pragmatics

English, as an international language, has become an essential component in the curriculum of China higher education. College English Curriculum Requirement (2007) claims that English is a compulsory course for university and college students. English teaching should follow foreign language teaching theories and focus on English knowledge, skills, cross-cultural communication and learning strategies. The ultimate purpose is to develop students’ language use ability through intensive training in listening and speaking, so as to enable them to communicate effectively with English speakers in their future study, work and social interactions.It is obvious that the College English Curriculum Requirement (2007) has stressed the importance of developing pragmatic competence which is referred to as "the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context"(Thomas,1983:94). The concept consists of two main elements: pragmalinguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence. The former refers to the ability to use linguistic elements to perform speech acts (Cenzo,2007), and the latter refers to the ability to vary speech-act strategies according to the situational or social variables in the act of communication (Harlow,1990). In an English-as-a-foreign-language environment (e.g., China), English textbook has played an important role in English education by serving as the main source and tool of English teaching and learning for both teachers and students. Therefore, it is imperative to assess teaching materials to examine whether it has provided students with appropriate and sufficient pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge for the development of pragmatic competence.This study aims to investigate pragmatic elements contained in New Era Interactive English-Viewing, Listening and Speaking (NEIE-VLS). Ishihara and Cohen’s (2010) pragmatic awareness-raising model is adopted and evolved to evaluation standard. Both quantitative and qualitative data are collected. The instruments include checklists, student questionnaire, student pragmatic competence tests, and teacher interview. Firstly, the author adopts the evaluation standard to assess the book from the perspect of the pragmatic objectively. Then,98first-year university students from the Central South University (CSU) are invited to fill the questionnaires and attend the pragmatic test to invest the effects of the books on their pragmatic ability. Finally, the instructors of the two selected classes accept the interviews in regards to the pragmatic information in the examined books. The findings are summarized as follows: First, NEIE-VLS contains abundant pragmalinguistic knowledge. Words and expressions for different types of speech acts are listed and elaborated. However, explicit sociopragmatic information seems to be scarce; as it fails to explain how to use a specific strategy in a given situation. Second, NEIE-VLS appears to facilitate students’ pragmalinguistic competence. The results of student pre-test on the speech act of requesting indicate that these participants have acquired good pragmalinguistic knowledge, while their knowledge in sociopragmatics is lacking. They are not sure about how to perceive and assess social distance, social status of the interlocutors and the imposition level of a request. However, the post-test data shows that the student participants’social pragmatic awareness has also improved. This change is not related to the textbook itself, but to the teacher participants’explicit instruction in this aspect in class.In the last chapter, the author puts forward implications and suggestions about how to revise the textbook series for pragmatics teaching purpose for book editors, and about how to adapt it in teachers’ English teaching practice.