An Investigation Of College Students' Pragmatic Competence And Pertinent Strategies

With the moving steps of globalization and the trends of the more frequent communication among countries, the role of foreign language becomes more and more important, which needs foreign language learners to have not only high-level linguistic competence, but also pragmatic competence for avoiding the pragmatic failure and the realization of successful cross-cultural communication.The study on pragmatic competence starts in 1970s, which has close connection with Cross-cultural pragmatics (Kasper,1995). Pragmatic competence is defined as a kind of knowledge, which is composed by knowledge of pragmatic system and the proper appliance of the pragmatic system. Thus, the acquisition of this competence is bound to have a close relationship with the language teaching. From Kasper and Rose's studies on the relationship between pragmatic competence and language teaching to He Ziran's definition and research of pragmatics, pragmatic competence becomes the key point in language teaching in both domestic and foreign area for needs of times, which provides the referential strategies for cross-cultural communication.This thesis is based on pragmatic theories, and the related study is divided into two parts:one is the research on current situation of pragmatic competence of Chinese college students from Hebei Normal University, and the questionnaire is selectively taken from He's "A Survey of Pragmatics", Zhang's "College English Teaching and the Cultivation of Pragmatic Competence" and the tests items from the author's practice; the other is an interview carried out by sampling at random, which plays a role of supplementary specification for analyzing the factors that influence the current situation and development of pragmatic competence of college students and leading to considering the pertinent suggestions for cultivating and developing of pragmatic competence. The research questions consist of:1. What's the current situation about Chinese college students' pragmatic competence?2. Does pragmatic competence necessarily increase with the development of the linguistic competence?3. Do English majors have advantage over non-English majors on pragmatic competence? If so, why? 4. What factors influence the current situation and the development of pragmatic competence of Chinese college students?5. What strategies can be applied for the development of pragmatic competence?The research has the following findings:Firstly, the current situation of Chinese college students' pragmatic competence is far from satisfied and needs to be developed; secondly, linguistic competence is a positive factor for the development of pragmatic competence but pragmatic competence does not necessarily increase with the development of the linguistic competence; thirdly, English majors have advantage over Non-English majors about pragmatic competence for the comprehensive training of linguistic and pragmatic competence; fourthly, according to the statistics of the questionnaire and the results of the interview, the author summarizes the factors that influence the current situation and the development of pragmatic competence of Chinese college students from the macroscopic and microscopic view and put forwards the pertinent suggestions; fifthly, the strategies as culture teaching, integrating explicit instruction with implicit instruction, teaching the theories of pragmatics and making full use of various kinds of leaning and teaching resources.