Pragmatic Failure Of Chinese Students In Learning English

Pragmatic failure occurs frequently in ESL learners' speech. It is divided into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure in terms of its resources. According to Thomas, native speakers are more likely to forgive non-native speakers' grammatical errors than to tolerate pragmatic failure or even mistake the learners for bearing ill will.This thesis attempts to investigate the pragmatic competence of Chinese ESL learners reflected in the ability to realize speech acts. Based on the analysis to data, it is found that there is little evidence of either pramalinguistic or sociopragmatic development across two groups of Chinese ESL learners chosen from first year and third year English majors respectively in DMU. This study provides some implications for future language research and teaching. If language acquisition research wants to feed into teaching methodology, the research environment has to be willing to move out of the laboratory and into the classroom. Since pragmatic failure can be subdivided into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure, the relevant teaching should start from these two angles. In order to attain TL pragmatic competence, learners need to be made aware of the different distribution restrictions and sociopragmatic norms governing the use of pragmalinguistic resources that appear to be the 'same' in the LI and L2.