A Study Of Developing Students' Cross-cultural Communicative Competence In Chinese College English Teaching--A Pragmatic Perspective

The aim of learning a language is to use it, which refers to pragmatic competence, i.e., the ability to use a target language in a tacit and appropriate way. This is also an essential component of communicative competence. Successful cultivation of foreign language learners' communicative competence, therefore, depends on whether it can effectively bring about learners' development of pragmatic competence. The thesis is a study of developing students' cross-cultural communicative competence in Chinese College English Teaching in a pragmatic perspective. The thesis begins with previous studies in this area abroad and at home. It is based on some pragmatic theories. It also mentions some pragmatic failures that the students make when learning English. It examines the students' pragmatic competence by means of a survey. Through the analysis of the survey, it puts forward some suggestions about how to develop the students' cross-cultural competence from a pragmatic dimension in College English Teaching.The whole thesis is made up of four chapters. The first chapter concentrates on previous study in developing students' cross-cultural communicative competence in language teaching abroad and at home. It discusses the history of pragmatic development and cross-cultural communicative competence. It reveals that the study abroad is more prosperous than that at home. It also mentions the most influential and famous figures who have contributed to the study of pragmatics and cross-cultural communicative competence. The second chapter focuses on a theoretical discussion on developing students' cross-cultural communicative competence in language teaching. Some concepts such as language, culture, communication, cross-cultural communication, pragmatics, pragmatic competence and cross-cultural communicative competence and the relationships between them are discussed. In particular it deals with pragmatic competence which is subdivided into pragmalinguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence following Leech's (1983) and Thomas' (1983) studies on pragmatics. It especially deals with what cross-cultural communicative competence is. According to Jia Yuxin's study, effective cross-cultural communicativecompetence at least should consist of the system of basic communication competence, the system of affective component and relational component, the episodic competence system and the system of strategic competence. And then the relationship of pragmatic competence, cross-cultural communicative competence and foreign language teaching is discussed. The third chapter investigates the current situation about students' pragmatic competence with the help of a survey. First it describes methodology including research questions, samples, instruments, the design of the Translation Test and the Questionnaire, the reliability and the validity of the survey and analysis method, then gives the results of the samples' pragmatic competence in three aspects (pragmatic competence, pragmalinguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence) and then also analyzes the results in the same aspects. The samples are the second-year non-English majors and the results are obtained which show students' pragmatic competence is still poor although they have made progress in it to some degree. The thesis analyses the failures the students have made in the survey from the pragmatic perspective and divides them into two main types, i.e. pragmalinguistic failures and sociopragmatic failures. At last, it draws the conclusion from the analyses of the results. The fourth chapter mainly concentrates on how to develop students' cross-cultural competence from a pragmatic dimension in CET. First pragmatic teaching in language teaching should be reinforced, and the students' cross-cultural awareness should be developed. Second, culture content should be integrated into language teaching, and especially culture teaching should be stressed in CET. Teacher training is also mentioned. At the end of the thesis the conclusion is drawn that pragmatic ability development must be put in the same position as linguistic ability and the cultural information transmitted in language can't be ignored in CET.