Pragmatic Failure And Spoken English Teaching In Senior High Schools

Language is an abstract system used for human communication. We use language to exchange information and to establish and maintain smooth, harmonious interpersonal relationships. This description of language makes us consider language not only in terms of its structure, but also in terms of its communicative functions. Hence language learning involves both"usage"and actual"use"related to specific contexts. As He Ziran (1997) comments,"Learning a language involves cultivating its pragmatic competence."English, as a global language, is playing an indispensable role in the modern society. In order to accomplish communication, English speakers need not only have the basic knowledge of English language, but pragmatic competence. It is obvious that English teachers should develop the students'communicative competence and treats it as the goal of English teaching.In intercultural communication, communicators, being deeply influenced by their native cultures, fail to understand counterparts'intentions and transmit their actual ideas, thus commit pragmatic failures. English teaching in senior high schools in china, paid more attention to linguistic knowledge, but much less to pragmatic competence. Most students have various kinds of problems when they are encountering native speakers of English, though they have a large vocabulary and a good command of rules of grammar. Therefore, in order to help students communicate successfully in intercultural context, it is significant for us English teachers to identify and minimize the students'pragmatic failure in English teaching.Cross-cultural pragmatic failure has attracted much attention in the field of pragmatics and applied linguistics. The term"pragmatic failure"is adopted from the article by J.Thomas(1983). She states that pragmatic failure refers to the inability to understand"What is meant by what is said."G..Leech (1983) said"the transfer of the norms of one community to another may well lead to pragmatic failure."In other words, pragmatic failure refers to communication breakdown resulting from being unable to realize a variety of pragmatic differences. Different from grammatical errors, pragmatic failure maybe regarded as a fact that a non-English native speaker is being deliberately impolite, unfriendly, or even rude. Guided by related theories about pragmatic competence, pragmatic principles and pragmatic failure, the author conducts this study in order to help English teachers to identify and minimize the students'pragmatic failure in English teaching. A teaching experiment is the core of this study, in which an English proficiency test and two pragmatic tests are employed to investigate the subjects'linguistic competence and pragmatic competence in Jiao Zhou No.2 Middle School. In order to make the investigation as objective as possible, all the data are collected and analyzed by SPSS 10.0. Major findings are as follows: 1) There is a long way to go for senior high English teaching to improve students'pragmatic competence. 2) Students'pragmatic competence is not developed with the development of their linguistic proficiency 3) Appropriate teaching methods in EFL classroom teaching can indeed prevent the occurrence of Chinese English learners'pragmatic failures and improve their pragmatic competence.It is argued in the present thesis that it is of crucial importance to cultivate high school student's pragmatic competence. Based on the research, this thesis attempts to highlight the importance of culture teaching in English language teaching, aims to find out underlying causes for pragmatic failure and suggests solutions, such as enhancing students'cultural awareness, stressing teachers'self-development, integrating teaching with contexts, and providing authentic materials to improve students'pragmatic competence, and thus achieve the goal of ELT.