Development Of Communicative Competence From The Perspective Of Pragmatic Competence

This thesis looks into the issue of the development of communicative competencefrom the perspective of pragmatic competence. "Pragmatic competence can becomprehended as the competence of using language to communicate appropriately,and it can be roughly divided into two aspects: expression and comprehension." (HeZi-ran, 1998:201-202). As ought to be acknowledged, it is a great progress thatforeign languages teaching in China has had a transfer from the instruction ofgrammar and structure to that of communication, nevertheless the author of the thesisthinks that there are some misunderstandings still existing in the comprehension of"communication". Some teachers simply take "communication" as making thelearners speak, imitating teachers in class, reciting oral texts or having simplesituational conversations, however, speaking English fluently doesn't mean acomplete success in communication.How can we effectively develop the learners' communicative competence, then?The author of the thesis thinks that we should take the pragmatic factors intoconsideration in the process of factual FL teaching. As a matter of fact, in affirmingthat the linguistic competence is the foundation of the communicative competence,the pragmatic competence contributes to an even more successful communication, asWiddowson (1987:153) says that "communicating in language not only needs to knowlinguistic knowledge but also to know how to use language". "How to use language"refers to the learners' pragmatic competence. The pragmatic competence as anacademic concept derives from pragmatics, which, as an independent discipline, cameinto being in the 1970s, and is aimed at studying how language is used and interpretedin a specific communicative environment, and answers how language is used bypeople to communicate. Although the terminology "pragmatic competence" was putforward after the linguistic competence and the communicative competence, thecommunicative competence has a close relevance with the pragmatic competence.Based on the theoretical analysis, this thesis examines the relationship betweenpragmatic competence and linguistic competence as well as pragmatic competence iiiand communicative competence, finding that the pragmatic competence is theimportant component which constitutes the communicative competence. The thesisgives an interpretation and some remarks on the pragmatic competence and thecommunicative competence, and probes the relation between these two aspects. Bymeans of the survey of pragmatic competence, result analysis and discussion, theauthor expounds and proves that pragmatic competence plays an important role in thedevelopment of the communicative competence, hence clarifying that the goal offoreign language teaching is to develop the learners' communicative competence,whereas the enhancement of the communicative competence cannot do without thedevelopment of the pragmatic competence, ultimately, the possession of the pragmaticcompetence is to be embodied by the communicative competence, and, meanwhile, inorder to guide the factual FL teaching, the author poses some suggestions on how todevelop the learners' pragmatic competence in teaching for the purpose of achievingthe ultimate goal of FL teaching—boosting the learners' communicative competence.