Study On Non-English Majors' Pragmatic Failures And Corresponding Measures In English Language Classroom Teaching

The concept of pragmatic failure was first introduced by Jenny Thomas who defines that pragmatic failure is an area of cross-cultural communication breakdown. It occurs whenever a person fails to understand the culture different from his own in communication. Pragmatic failure is invariably worse than grammatical mistakes as in interacting with foreigners, native speakers tend to be rather tolerant of errors in pronunciation or syntax. In contrast, violations of rules of speaking are often interpreted as bad manners since the native speaker is unlikely to be aware of sociolinguistic relativity.English, as a Lingua Franca, plays an increasingly important role in international communication and has maintained its position as the most widely used foreign language. Its role will be further strengthened as China's impact will be felt in more fields in international arena. However, because of less emphasis on cultural teaching in the past, Chinese students of English, in particular, non-English major students frequently commit pragmatic failure when they communicate with native speakers. In order to grope for some solutions to this problem, the thesis tends to probe how to take some effective measures to improve the students' pragmatic competence and offer some suggestions on cultural teaching.The thesis aims to reveal the relationship between pragmatic failure and culture teaching through research. Two groups of students were chosen for the test and then data were collected and analyzed. Three research questions are designed and addressed:1. What is the current situation of the non-English majors' pragmatic competence?2. Will the pragmatic competence of the Chinese non-English majors advance atthe faster rate on the condition that they are given more culture teaching?3. What causes the Chinese non-English majors' intercultural pragmatic failures? Results show that the non-English major students who have received culturalteaching fail less pragmatically than those who are only given linguistic teaching; conscious cultivation of the students' cultural awareness can be one practical way of reducing pragmatic failures. Based on the results of the study, the thesis proposes that linguistic teaching should be combined with cultural teaching and stress should be laid on teaching methods, teachers and learners. Teachers are facilitators of cultural teaching; learners are receivers of cultural learning; and teaching methods are approaches for cultural teaching. They should be integrated as each of them plays a very important role in cultural teaching. We should bring the roles of these three factors into full play in cultural teaching so as to improve the students' pragmatic competence. Moreover, the thesis puts forward some suggestions on teaching materials and assessment system.The experiment of cultural teaching has some implications for English language teaching. Firstly, the study shows that cultural teaching is a necessity for improving students' pragmatic competence. Secondly, the study demonstrates that cultural teaching in the language classroom can be conducive to the cultivation of the students' cultural awareness. Thirdly, the combination of teaching methods, teachers and learners boost the development of the students' cultural awareness and advance their pragmatic competence.