The Study Of Cultivating College Students' Pragmatic Competence In ELT From The Perspective Of Cultural Schema Theory

Pragmatic failure often occurs on Chinese learners of English. The influence of pragmatic failure is more serious than linguistic errors, since it can lead to communication breakdown. Cognition is the base of language. Many researches illustrated the objective reason of pragmatic failure from such perspective as intercultural communication, interlanguage pragmatics etc., but less has been done in subjective psychological elements of communicators. With the purpose to probe into the strategies of overcoming pragmatic failure and develop students'cross-cultural pragmatic competence, based on cultural schema theory, the thesis researches on students'pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication through survey and descriptive analysis.What are the pragmatic failures that students are likely to commit in cross-cultural communication? What are the underlying causes of different pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication? What are the strategies to develop student'pragmatic competence? Centering on these research questions, the thesis conducts a research survey on 162 non-English major undergraduates'pragmatic competence at Yanshan University in the form of questionnaire.The research has the following findings: 1) The result of the pragmatic competence test reveals that College English teaching has much room for improvement in respect of developing students'cross-cultural pragmatic competence. 2) Based on cultural schema theory, making use of Nishida's primary types of cultural schemas for social interactions, the thesis presents a new classification of pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication and illustrates the causes of different kinds of pragmatic failures. 3) The thesis argues that the lack of cultural schemas of the target language is the key reason of students'pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication, and probes the necessity, feasibility and specific strategies of constructing students' cross-cultural schemas to develop students'cross-cultural pragmatic competence.The thesis illustrates the causes of pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication from the new scope of cultural schema theory, which has important implications for English teaching and learning. It can help college teachers and students realize the great importance of developing pragmatic competence and make them have a systematic understanding of the reasons of different pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communication. Therefore, different counter strategies can be taken to effectively foster students'pragmatic competence in English teaching and learning.