An Investigation Of Pragmatic Competence And Motivation In English Learning For Non-English Major Graduates

Pragmatic competence refers to the ability to use a target language in a tacit and appropriate way, which is an essential component of communicative competence. Successful cultivation of foreign language learners' communicative competence, therefore, depends on whether it could effectively bring about learners' development of pragmatic competence.Study on pragmatic development constitutes one of the concerns of interlanguage pragmatics (IP), a disciplinary branch across pragmatics and second language acquisition. In addition to pragmatic development, which is dynamic in nature, another objective of the subject is to describe pragmatic characteristics of normative speakers' language, which is of static nature. In fact, much research of IP to date belongs to static IP study. As to the dynamic study, only the relation between linguistic and pragmatic development has been well studied, research on the development of pragmatic competence as an independent variable is still at its early stage. Recently, following the research tradition of second language acquisition (SLA), the influence of individual differences (IDs) on pragmatic development has come to attract attention from the researchers in the field of IP. Study on the role of language learning motivation, an important individual difference variable, has naturally become one of the main research topics.Motivational theories have been applied to the field of foreign or second language learning for more than forty years. The theories explain languagelearning from social, affective, and cognitive perspectives. Gardner's socioeducational model lays emphasis on language learners' attitudes toward the target language and the target community. The attitudes are believed to determine the motivational strength, which in turn has impact on language achievement. Deci and Ryan introduced intrinsic-extrinsic motivation theory from cognitive psychology to the field of foreign or second language learning, which is in particular favor of learners' autonomy. The social constructivism takes an eclectic attitude to the existing motivational theories and pays attention to the temporal aspect of motivation.Pragmatic study is a cognitive activity and a social activity as well. Theories applied in studies on pragmatic development including acculturation model, cognitive processing, sociocultural theory, language socialization, and interactional competence explain that pragmatic learning cannot escape from the influence of language learners' affect, cognitive ability, and interactional competence due to the nature of pragmatic learning.However, investigations concerning the role of motivation in foreign or second language learning usually take as the criterion the result got from tests which focus on linguistic knowledge instead of pragmatic knowledge. Consequently, in spite of considerable amount of existing literature on motivation, quite few of them have ever provided explanations to the impact of motivation on pragmatic development. Based on the review of previous studies from both home and abroad, the present survey was conducted among91 newly registered graduates.Results show that subjects hold a positive attitude toward pragmatic study, however, no significant correlation has been found between pragmatic competence and attitude toward pragmatic study, and it is the same case as far as instrumental motivation is concerned. Only cultural motivation demonstrated a significant correlation with pragmatic competence. The results have much to do with the college English teaching syllabus and testing system.At the end of this thesis, the author provides suggestions from two perspectives concerning how to protect and sustain learners' motivation in their pragmatic learning. What we should always keep in mind is that nothing will be achieved without taking practical and effective measures in pragmatic teaching and learning.