Astudy Of Explicit Pragmatic Instruction In Junior English Dialogue Teaching

Pragmatic competence is one of the important components of the communicative competence for second language learners. New studies in second language acquisition of pragmatics have proved the teachability of pragmatic knowledge and a lot of scholars have pointed out the importance and feasibility of pragmatic instruction. Based on the review of the previous studies on pragmatic instruction abroad and in China, This research tested middle school students'pragmatic competence and investigated the situation of the pragmatic instruction in dialogue teaching class by questionnaire with an aim of finding out the problems of pragmatic instruction in dialogue teaching and trying to explore a new model of pragmatic instruction in dialogue teaching.The related literature mainly focuses on two aspects: comparative studies of the results of pragmatic instruction and investigations of the students'pragmatic ability. The studies that focus on the process of pragmatic instruction are rare and the studies involved in specific content and approaches of pragmatic instruction for students in basic education are much less. And almost all the studies involved in the process of pragmatic instruction are limited in the special pragmatic class which is separated from daily English class. For students in basic education, teachers can not teach all pragmatic knowledge and it is not realistic to offer special pragmatic class. So it is very necessary for teachers to choose appropriate pragmatic knowledge and make it run through daily English class so that pragmatic knowledge can be rooted in grammar knowledge. This thesis chooses dialogue teaching classes which are involved in every unit of the junior high school textbook New Standard English published by Foreign Language Study and Teaching Press as an entry point to study how to realize pragmatic instruction in daily English class. This research tested students'pragmatic competence in the aspect of communicative speech acts and investigated the situation of teachers'pragmatic instruction in dialogue teaching. As a result, Problems were found out, analyzed and a new model of pragmatic instruction in dialogue teaching was explored.The results of the test have shown that almost half of students have pragmatic failures for lack of enough knowledge of communicative culture and awareness of context. The results of questionnaires have revealed a lot of problems. Though most of teachers have realized the necessity of pragmatic instruction, the time spent in pragmatic instruction is still very limited and they are not clear enough about what to teach and how to teach pragmatics in dialogue teaching class; Though teachers involved often teach knowledge of speech acts appearing in the dialogue material they rarely study the rules of distribution in speech acts so they can not add some other necessary speech acts which do not appear in the teaching materials; About the approaches of pragmatic instruction, though most of teachers choose explicit approach their understanding of it is far from complete. They surely often provide the metapragmatic knowledge but after that they rarely provide authentic materials to develop students'pragmatic awareness; Students'communicative practice is designed to consolidate knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. Besides, feedback from teachers after the practice also focuses on correctness of grammar instead of the appropriateness of language..Finally, based on the analysis about the results of the test and questionnaires, according to the author's teaching experience, the content of pragmatic instruction were explored from three aspects: the characteristics of communicative speech acts, English Curriculum Standards and junior high school textbook New Standard English published by Foreign Language Study and Teaching Press. Also, a new class model of explicit pragmatic instruction in dialogue teaching was put forward.