Relationship Between Grammatical Knowledge & Pragmatic Ability Of College English Learners: The Case Of Using Would

The present study addresses a recently raised methodological issue in the field ofinterlanguage pragmatics, particularly in examining the relationship between grammaticalknowledge and pragmatic ability. Early in 1965, Chomsky proposed the idea of linguistic competence and linguisticperformance. In the following years, many linguists such as Bachman, Kasper andKellerman did much research in studying the relationship between the two, especially in thefield of interlanguage and L2 learning. However, in China, it has received relatively littleattention. As a college English teacher, the writer of this paper thinks the answer of thisquestion will be helpful to the reform of college English teaching in China. To study the relationship between the two with the background of China, three testswere administered to 120 Chinese adult learners of English, who were chosen from JiLinUniversity: (a) a general grammar test designed to measure a broad range of grammaticalknowledge (i.e., general grammatical knowledge); (b) a specific grammatical test designed tomeasure grammatical knowledge of the usage of would (i.e., specific grammaticalknowledge) and (c) a pragmatic test designed to measure the functions of would (i.e.,pragmatic ability). Through analysis, the present study offers some interesting findings. First, the resultssuggest that L2 learners' general and specific grammatical knowledge differ in predictingtheir specific pragmatic ability. Learners who got high marks in the general grammaticalknowledge test may not have high marks in the specific pragmatic ability test, while thescore of the specific grammatical knowledge test usually goes along with that of the specificpragmatic ability test. Furthermore, the present study observed different results regarding theL2 learners' gender and major. Third, the score of the learners in the specific pragmaticability test was usually lower than that of the specific grammatical knowledge test, whichsuggests that their pragmatic ability is low comparing with their grammatical knowledge. Addressing the methodological issue in the field of interlanguage pragmatics, this studyhopes to offer some evidence for a more focused examination of the relationship betweengrammatical knowledge and pragmatic ability. At the same time, the writer hopes thepedagogical implications of the study can be noticed in college English language teaching ofChina.