Pragmatic Presupposition In English Listening Teaching From The Perspective Of Mutual Information

The research on presupposition originated in philosophical field and was firstly put forward Germany philosopher Freg in 1982. In the beginning, presupposition was defined as a kind of potential information known by both sides and the condition presupposed in advance. Since sixties in twenth century, acording to the development of semantic, the disscussion about presupposition also incited many linguists'interests. Usually, linguists researched presupposition as a kind of semantic relation, but the appearance of pragmatic provided a new angle for our study. Stalnaker firstly gave the conception of pragmatic presupposition and subsequent understanding by other scholars made this subject more complex and comprehensive. Although there are various explaination about pragmatic presupposition, we can find a common point: there is a close relation between presupposition and the speaker and the presupposition refers to the intention, attitude and faith of both addressee and speaker.Similarly, the theory of pragmatic presupposition cannot be neglected in our foreign language education of middle school. Information input and output together make out communication successful. Listening is just one of the main resources for our information input. Pragmatic presupposition can help us discover the deeper meaning sentences, the background of the dialogue and judge speaker's intention. Using the theoris of pragmatin presupposition in our listening training and expanding the background between language learners and mother language users could help students obtain more cultural presupposition and strengthen their sense of language. However, in our daily teaching, due to the limitation of all kinds of condition and the pressure of examination, teachers and students usually put most of their attention on the repeated exercises and the explaination of skills and ignored the importance of mutual knowledge. Learning foreign language not only means master the surface meaning, but the understanding and digestion of the country's culture, history, society and way of life and thinking. The author of this thesis just found presupposition's key role in listening study, and background knowledage and mutual information are the premise and foundation of presupposition. Through the two months training and the analysis on the results of the test before and after the training, the athout proved that there is a close relation between mutual information, presupposition and listening study.There are totally five parts in this thesis:The first part gave us a gerneral introduction of the research background, the situation of English listening teaching and study in domestic and abroad, and the objectives and significance of this thesis. The second part introduced the historical research about presupposition, the definition, classification and characteristics of presupposition.The third chapter mainly discripe three methodologies of the research: literature review, questionnaire survey and experimental teaching. In this thesis, the author generally discussede the status of English listening study in middle school, especially the background information study through the survey to some teachers and student choosed randomly.The fourth part mainly elaborate the function of pragmatic presupposition in English listening teaching and how to improve listening level using the theories of pragmatic listening.The last part is a conclusion about the whole thesis and it also pointed out some limitation of this research.As language study is a long and tough process, not mention the complete understanding to a country's culture which needs our long-time persistence. The author of this thesis also wish the research related pragmatic presupposition could be certain helpful to oue English education.