Pragmatic Failure And Cultural Introduction

Since the 1980s, as the communicative approach in FLT (Foreign Language Teaching) is increasingly gaining popularity and researches on language and culture have been done pervasively, more and more researchers and scholars have begun to concern themselves with learners' pragmatic competence and ICC (Intercultural Communicative Competence) rather than their grammatical competence and communicative competence. While paying close attention to similar studies abroad, Chinese scholars have actively studied the current situations and predicted future development of English pragmatic competence of Chinese students (Wang Dexing 1990; Hong Gang 1991; Liu Shuying et al. 2002; Luo Lisheng 2003; Qu Zheng & Yu Dongming 2003; Yang Wenxiu 2005, etc.) These researches discussed the differences between English and Chinese pragmatics and major pragmatic failures possibly caused by these differences, and pointed out several approaches to developing the pragmatic competence of Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners, but they did not do any empirical researches into the cultivation of pragmatic competence. So far, few empirical researches have been carried out into the integration of the cultivation of pragmatic competence with the practice of Chinese EFL teaching.However, the feasibility of the training ways of pragmatic competence needs to be tested and confirmed in teaching practice. Therefore, an experiment with a pretest/posttest non-equivalent control group design is carried out in this study, along with interviews. The purposes are to examine how well Chinese students have developed their pragmatic competence, what the causes of the pragmatic failure which English learners in China are prone to invite in inter-cultural communication are, and whether appropriate cultural introduction in EFL classroom teaching is necessary and feasible in preventing the occurrence of pragmatic failures. The subjects are 120 non-English majors from two intacc classes in Anqing Teachers College, 8 of whom are chosen as subjects for interviews. Based on the results of the pretest, necessary English cultural knowledge is introduced to the experimental groupin the regular classroom teaching. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are made in the thesis. Major findings are as follows:1) There is a great gap between ideal intentions and the reality — College English Teaching has much room for improvement with respect to developing students pragmatic competence;2) Students' pragmatic competence is not developed with the development of their linguistic proficiency and there exist large quantities of pragmatic failures in daily intercultural communication;3) Appropriate cultural introduction in EFL classroom teaching is indeed an effective way to prevent the occurrence of Chinese English learners' pragmatic failures and to improve their pragmatic competence.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One Introduction explains the need for and objectives of the study and gives a brief introduction to the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two Literature Review introduces definitions, classifications, and sources of pragmalic failure, followed by the review of some related studies in this field, abroad and in China. Such concepts as intercultural communication, pragmatic competence, and cultural introduction are also presented in this chapter. Chapter Three is methodology, describing the research questions, subjects, instruments, treatment, as well as the means of data analysis. Chapter Four Results and Discussion reports the results of this study and presents the discussion of the possible factors responsible for these results at length. Chapter Five Conclusion summarizes the major findings of the study, discusses its pedagogical implications, points out its limitations and offers suggestions for further research.