A Pragmatic Study Of English Request Strategies Employed By Chinese Learners Of English

Studies have shown that learners'pragmatic competence is of great importance in their communication with the native speakers. It may cause breakdowns, or pragmatic failures in a face-to-face cross-cultural communication. Faced with the overwhelming popularity of English learning in China, the writer has a question echoing in her mind: what is the Chinese English learners'pragmatic ability in using English to communicate with others in their daily life?With the inspiration of the studies on English request strategies, especially of the findings of the Cross-Culture Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP), the writer carries out the present quantitative study to try to find out Chinese learners'pragmatic ability in adopting proper request strategies in English. It begins with a literature review of the studies on politeness phenomena and request strategies in both English speaking culture and Chinese culture. Then the emphasis is put on the English request strategies employed by the Chinese English learners. It reveals that students in the study are not competent enough to offer absolutely appropriate English requests in some situations. Further, the analysis of the data collected from the study offers some hints that the English request strategies employed by the learners are under the influences of both the positive and negative pragmatic transfer of their requestive strategies in Chinese. In addition, learners'pragmatic competence is affected by their linguistic competence: the learners of a higher English proficiency level seem to be able to offer more proper English requests than those of a lower one.Finally, the implications of the study remind us once again the important role of pragmatic competence and suggest the ways to improve learners'pragmatic ability in using the language they are learning.