A Study Of Pragmatic Inference In College English Reading

In the new era of rapid development of science and technology, and close connections with the world, information communicating shows new challenges to reading comprehension ability.Reading comprehension is an important content in learning a foreigh language, is a conversational process between readers and the author, and is also a necessary means to obtain information. Meanwhile, reading comprehension is a complex psychological activity, so it's essential to clarify the nature of reading. Reading is much more a cognitive and constructive process. It concerns not only decoding, but also pragmatic inference. But, the cultivation of students' pragmatic inferential ability tends to be neglected in college English reading comprehension course.The present study is an attempt to explore the nature of reading comprehension under the guiding of the basic theories of pragmatic inference. Reading comprehension can be viewed as follows: Reading comprehension is a process of communication between the writer and the reader, the aim of reading comprehension is to obtain the author's intended meaning; Reading comprehension is an inferential process is which the reader uses his encyclopedia, logical and lexical knowledge to process the incoming information; Reading comprehension is a process of seeking optimal relevance between the writer and the reader. It is a dynamic psychological construct and is developed in the course of interaction.Based on the analysis of the nature of reading comprehension, the author aims to investigate the following questions by conducting two experiments: How is the relationship between English as a foreign language learner's reading comprehension competence and pragmatic inference ability? Is pragmatic inference important to English reading comprehension? Are there any difference among college students who are in different majors?E-Prime1.0 were used in those experiments, and the results were analyzed by using SPSS14.0. The results indicate that as a basis of learning English, the grammatical competence plays a significant part in the development of pragamtic inference ability.Some significant implications for the reading teaching are put forward according to the results and findings of the experiments: above all, the teacher should construct the foundation of reading by imparting lexical and grammatical knowledge, and then the teacher should be clear about the nature of reading, and apply relevance theory to the teaching. The students should learn how to improve the ability of pragmatic inferencing, and thus they can absorb the essence of the passage, and achieve the goals of raising reading comprehension ability.