Developing College Learners' Pragmatic Competence Through Classroom-based Explicit Pragmatic Instruction

The study on interlanguage pragmatic competence development is an issue of interlanguage pragmatics. Interlanguage pragmatics is the study of learners'performance of speech acts and the development of pragmatic competence from the perspective of pragmatics. In the end of the twentieth century, it became an independent discipline.The researches in the past twenty years mainly focused on the features of the learners'interlanguage. Most of the researches are contrastive studies on interlanguage and target language, and few of them are developmental researches.Much research literature shows explicit pragmatic instruction facilitates learners'pragmatic competence development. However, it's an under explored area. Literature on the how classroom-based instruction affect learners'pragmatic competence is inadequate. In China, cultivating learners'communicative competence is the ultimate goal of the college English teaching. Pragmatic competence, as an important component of communicative competence, is also the aim of college English teaching. More and more Researchers and teachers realized the importance of cultivating learners'pragmatic competence. How to develop learners'pragmatic competence through classroom- based instruction is an urgent problem in front of the researchers and teachers.The purpose of this study is to find out whether pragmatic instruction can facilitate college learners'pragmatic competence development. The research focuses on the follow questions:1. What is the effect of classroom-based explicit pragmatic instruction on college students'pragmatic competence development?(1) What is the effect of classroom-based explicit pragmatic instruction on college students'pragmatic comprehension?(2) What is the effect of classroom-based explicit pragmatic instruction on college students'pragmatic production?2. What is the relationship between Chinese college students'linguistic proficiency and pragmatic competence?3. What factors may influence college students'acquisition of pragmatic competence?A total number of 65 students participated in the program. They were from the two undergraduate classes of grade one in Hebei Medical University. The study takes the pretest and posttest experimental group design. One class is randomly assigned as control group and the other class as the experimental group. The experimental class was given an explicit pragmatic instruction. As for the control group, the researcher only focuses on the explanation of grammatical knowledge. Before the treatment, the pre-test is given to the two groups and after the treatment the posttest is taken. The statistics are analyzed by t-test and Person correlation analysis.The result shows learners'pragmatic comprehension competence improved obviously but their pragmatic production did not improve much. There is no significant correlation between learners'pragmatic competence and linguistic proficiency. That means the learners pragmatic competence does not develop with grammar proficiency, they should be trained to get this ability. The study also explored the factors may influence learners pragmatic competence, which includes input, instructional factors, the negative pragmatic transfer, and individual differences. Finally, the researcher discusses the pedagogical implication of the study in English teaching, such as, strengthening learners'awareness of culture difference, introducing pragmatic rules, increasing authentic input. The limitations of the research and suggestions for further research are also provided in the last part.