Developing Pragmatic Competence Of Non-English Majors In Intensive Reading

There is a consensus in foreign language teaching world that one of the aims of foreign language education is to develop students' cross-cultural communicative competence, and that teacher should teach culture simultaneously when teaching language itself. According to Widdowson (1989), cross-cultural communicative competence includes two aspects: linguistic competence and pragmatic competence. Linguistic competence is made up of three components-phonology, lexicon, and grammar, but pragmatic competence, another important component of communicative competence, is the ability to select a linguistic form that is appropriate for a specific situation, or to use English appropriately in social interaction. As for linguistic competence, Chinese teachers of English have paid much attention to it in teaching program, while pragmatic competence has been almost neglected in language teaching. Some researchers reveal that the pragmatic competence of the Chinese learners is much poorer than their linguistic competence, especially among non-English majors. It is observed that pragmatic failures caused by cultural differences often hinder effective cross-cultural communication. Pragmatic failures, the indication of lower pragmatic competence, may lead to misunderstanding, and even other participants may attribute it to one's inner quality and character, and hence regard it as an offence. As Wolfson ever says: " In interacting with foreigners, native speakers tend to be rather tolerant of errors in pronunciation or syntax, in contrast, violations of rules of speaking are often interpreted as bad manners since the native speaker is unlikely to be aware of sociolinguistic relativity"(quoted in 戚雨村. 1994:19). College English Intensive Reading is one of the major courses for non-English majors. This thesis, accordingly, attempts to explore an effective way of developing the cross-cultural pragmatic competence of non-English majors through College English Intensive Reading.In order to prove the author's hypothesis that improving teaching techniques consciously can improve students' pragmatic competence, the author conducts an experiment on her two natural classes of Grade 2001 from Hubei Institute for Nationalities, which are assigned randomly to an experimental group and a controlgroup. Before the experiment, the author administers a pragmatic pre-test to the two groups. Data is processed and a correlation analysis is conducted through computer. Data gained from the test shows that there is no significant difference between students' mean scores and the growth of their pragmatic competence is not in pace with that of their linguistic competence, which further confirms some researchers' findings. Based on the results of the test, the author analyzes possible causes of pragmatic failure. In her interpretation, pragmatic failure is caused by improper teaching technique, transfer of language itself, transfer of cultural meaning and transfer of situational meaning. During the experiment period of about four months (17 weeks), the two groups are treated differently by the teacher. For the control group, only linguistic knowledge is emphasized, sometimes with some background knowledge introduction. While in the experimental group, both linguistic and cultural knowledge are emphasized. Students in the experimental group have more to do in order to develop their pragmatic competence. Given the unsatisfactory aspects of teaching in nowadays' Chinese college English classroom, the author proposes some practical techniques practiced in College English Intensive Reading as follows:1. Strengthening English output by student-talk mainly through role-play.2. Introducing some useful pragmatic principles.3. Integrating cultural components into language teaching in Intensive Reading.After the experiment, two groups immediately take part in a pragmatic post-test. Data gained from the test shows that there is a significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and the control group. The mean scor...