Pragmatic Failure In Intercultural Communication And Cultural Teaching

With the development of science and technology, intercultural communication becomes more and more important. It is obvious that teachers should develop students' communicative competence and treat it as the goal of ELT. But students still have various kinds of problems when they encounter native speakers of English. The thesis aims to explore students' problems in intercultural communication - pragmatic failure and its causes, and try to find a solution to those problems by probing the goals, content and techniques of cultural teaching in ELT.First, the thesis explores two types of pragmatic failure and points out that the main cause of pragmatic failure is the lack of cultural background knowledge. It also analyzes the differences between Chinese culture and western culture from the following aspects: verbal communication, value system and non-verbal communication.Then, the thesis points out that the key to such problems is to acquire certain knowledge of culture, and suggests some approaches to teaching students cultural knowledge and cultural communication reasonably and effectively so as for students to grasp appropriate pragmatic rules and develop their competence in intercultural communication. When probing the techniques of cultural teaching, the thesis emphasizes the importance of making good use of modern teaching technology and mediums such as multimedia technology and presents a courseware about festivals made by the author. Besides, the thesis gives some constructive suggestions towards cultural teaching; cultural syllabus design, textbooks compilation and teachers' role are all within the author's consideration.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 serves as an introduction, which raises the ultimate goal in ELT and points out that integrating English language teaching with cultural teaching is effective to help students avoid pragmatic failure in intercultural communication.Chapter 2 focuses on two kinds of pragmatic failure: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. The relationship between pragmatic failure and culture is laid considerable emphasis. After describing basic concepts about communication, culture and intercultural communication, this chapter also analyzes differences between Chinese culture and western culture from three aspects.Chapter 3 probes the goals, content and the various techniques of cultural teaching in ELT. A courseware about festivals made by the author demonstrates the important use of modern teaching technology and mediums such as multimedia technology.hapter 4 gives some constructive suggestions towards cultural teachinginvolving cultural syllabus design, textbooks compilation and teachers' role.Chapter 5 serves as the conclusion of the study. It stresses the importance of cultivating the students' communicative competence and summarizes the main idea of the thesis. It also presents the author's puzzles about the content and techniques of cultural teaching in ELT and her hope of future researchers' better work in this field.Key words: intercultural communication;pragmatic failure;culture cultural differences;cultural teaching;multimedia technology;constructive suggestions...