Influences Of Learning Motivation On Pragmatic Competence For Business English Majors

As a second language, the process and achievement of English learning are affected by various kinds of factors. From the 1960s, researchers began to explore second language acquisition (SLA) and its influential variables, through which, they find that motivation is one of the essential factors that restricts language learning results, thus its influence should not be neglected. Canadian scholar Gardner put forward a classical motivation construct—Social-educational Model, based on social psychology, this model is considered as the leading theory in the study of foreign language motivation. Deci & Ryan classified motivation into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation from cognitive psychology point of view, by which the autonomy learning was emphasized. In the 1990s, based on the study of Gardner's motivation theory, Dornyei proposed "Three-level Categorization of Motivation" in foreign language learning, which three levels of motivation were classified:language, learner and learning situation level, emphasizing the importance of learning situation.One of the objectives of language learning is to communicate with others effectively. As an important constituent of communicative competence, pragmatic competence refers to the ability that one possesses to communicate with others appropriately on different occasions. With the development of English learning and teaching, pragmatic competence has become a significant yardstick of evaluating language learners' achievements, especially for Business English (BE) majors. BE is defined as English used in different kinds of commercial activities. Though deeply rooted in general English, BE is always regarded as one of ESP (English for Specific Purposes), which holds more explicit content and purposes. BE majors are required to have a high level of Engish proficiency as well as sufficient business knowledge. More importantly, compared with non-English majors or English majors, students who majored in BE should be equipped with higher level of pragmatic competence in order to be equal to their future jobs. Nowadays, many colleges and universities set up BE as a major, while the pragmatic competence of BE majors is still at a lower level.Though the development of students' pragmatic competence attracts more and more attention; an increasing number of researches on learning motivation appear; and the correlation between those two factors are explored by some researchers, few scholars focused on the interrelationship between learning motivation and BE majors' pragmatic competence. Therefore, with the help of two questionnaires, the author of this thesis conducts an exploration on correlations between learning motivation and BE majors' pragmatic competence, attempting to find ways to improve students' pragmatic competence.This thesis firstly reviews the development of motivation theory and then briefly illustrates the theory of motivation, pragmatic competence as well as the interrelationship between them. After that, the development and current situation of BE is introduced. On the basis of the above theoretical studies, this thesis discusses the influence of motivation on BE teaching and the necessity of developing students'pragmatic competence in BE teaching. In order to find out the correlation between motivation and pragmatic competence, the author conducts an investigation on 110 BE seniors from Harbin University of Commerce. With the help of two questionnaires, the author finds out that intrinsic motivation has a positive impact on pragmatic competence and explores some pedagogical implications on generating students' pragmatic learning motivation.