Application Of Relevance Theory In Teaching Listening Of Chinese As A Foreign Language

The Relevance Theory(RT) is proposed by Sperber andWilson in their book《Relevance : Communication and Cognition》.It is the theory of cognitive pragmatics concerning verbalcommunication.This theory shifts the research point of pragmaticsfrom speech producing to speech comprehending, it can explainlarge quantity of linguistic and cognitive problems.This thesis passes to draw lessons from the RT and itsresearch results, study how to guide the teaching listening ofChinese as a foreign language.The RT is an completely new approach to communication andutterance understanding:The RT thinks that verbal communication process involvestwo kinds of modes at the same time:the code mode and theostensive-inferential mode, the latter is basic, the former belongs tothe latter.The speaker's ostensive behavior involves two kinds ofintention:informative intention(the explicit meaning of an utterance)and communicative intention(the implicit meaning of anutterance).The informative intention is understood by decode andthe communicative intention is achieved by inference.Thecommunication is successful only after the communicativeintertion is achieved. To inference,the listener acquires context first.According theRT, context is dynamic rather than fixed and is psychologicalconstruct which is formed during comprehension.The selection ofcognitive context determined by the search for relevance. The RT defines relevance according to two factors:contextualeffect and processing effort.Other things being equal,the greater thecontextual effect,the higher the relevance;the less the processingeffort,the higher the relevance. The RT thinks that human cognition gears to getting the mostrelevance by using the smallest effort,however,in communication,human beings always have to balance the effect and the effort,thusgetting the optimal relevance.To communicate,is to do inference;todo inference,is to search for the optimal relevance. The RT emphasizes that the inference is very important in thecomprehension process, emphasizing that the success ofcommunication is decided by the communicators'cognitiveenvironment being mutual manifestness, bring the implications ofthe teaching listening Chinese as a foreign language is: the Chineseteaching belongs to the second language teaching, and, theteaching object is mostly for adult. They set up a completecognitive environment in study the second language, already in thebrains.Therefore, adult at study the second language have thestronger cognitive ability, be good at to proceed the association ofthought, guess to a words for listening language with reasonlogically. Along with contact increasingly and closely, mankind tomany basic cognition of the world more and more same alike orresemble, mankind have the cognitive ability that tend more andmore together. Mankind to the world together of the cognitionconstituted the cognitive context of the human communication. Wethink that the above positive factor should take in to guide theexploitation well in teaching. Under the RT frame, he listening comprehension processcould be from speech chain with relevance chain constitute of.Speech chain is formed of encode , speak, deliver, apperceive,decode. The decoding acquires informative intention. Relevancechain is participated by decode-create contextual assumptions -search for the relevance-inference-complete communication etc.The nature of listening comprehension is an inferential process andthe aim is to obtain the speaker's communicative intention. According to the RT principle, we can regard teachinglistening as ostensine-inferential process between teacher andstudent. Being the teacher should be possibly familiar withstudent of the knowledge background, pass the application of theteaching strategy guarantees own teaching is a kind of ostensivebehavior, helping the student establishes optimal relevance. Based on the RT interpretation of the listening comprehensionprocess , teaching strategy that we adopt in teaching listening is: 1 Inspiring the students set up the relevance chain. Inteaching , the teacher should inspire students set up relevance chainof listening comprehension, educating they make use of the abilitythat Chinese independence reason logically. 2 The application of cognitive context in teaching. Theteacher should consider well the student's cognitive environment...