A Case Study Of Pragmatic Failures Committed By Undergraduates In Guangzhou

Traditional English teaching and learning has laid much emphasis on grammatically correct sentences and largely ignored the cultivation of students'pragmatic competence--- the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and understand language in context, which lead to Chinese English learners'pragmatic failure in intercultural communication. The study of pragmatic failure in China can be traced back to the mid of 1980's and subsequently many scholars have turned their attention to this field. However, the previous investigation has mainly focused on the pragmatic failure in verbal communication and overlooked that in the level of nonverbal communication (Li, 2004). And they usually adopt written test to examine the pragmatic failure committed by students who have not studied intercultural communication specifically.This study, conducted at one university in Guangzhou, mainly examines the English majors'pragmatic failure in both verbal and nonverbal communication and explores the possible causes from students'perspectives. The theory used is mainly based on Jenny Thomas'(1983) pragmatic failure theory and speech act theory (Austin, 1962). The study integrates quantitative and qualitative research and applies multiple methods to collect data. A written test is designed to find out students'pragmatic failure and examine their pragmatic competence. In addition, the method of observation is conducted to re-examine their competence in an authentic context by speaking with a native speaker. Questionnaire and case study aim to understand students'general attitudes toward their English learning so as to explore the causes of pragmatic failure from their perspectives. The investigation is carried out in both Grade Two and Grade Four.The results indicate that the average pragmatic competence of the subjects is still in a poor level. They committed pragmatic failure not only in verbal communication but also in nonverbal one. The students in Grade Four have stronger cultural awareness after learning the course intercultural communication, but they do not show much advancement in pragmatic competence than those in Grade Two. Moreover, their pragmatic competence examined in written test is not necessarily consistent with that in real-life communication with native speakers. The causes of pragmatic failure examined through interviews can be summarized as follows: language negative transfer, deficient pragmatic input, inappropriate classroom teaching, ineffective individual learning technique and lack of...