On Acquisition Of Non-english Major Undergraduates’Interlanguage Pragmatic Competence In English Class

Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) plays an important role in second language acquisition (SLA). As a new interdisciplinary branch of study, it discusses the pragmatic characteristics of IL, in addition to how these characteristics form and develop in the process of exchanging and studying.Traditional interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) studies began with learners’ability to perform and understand speech acts in certain situations. However, with the in-depth exploration in this field, many pragmatics and language educators gradually inclined to develop IL learner’s IL pragmatic competence. In China, college students are an important part of English learners, and the developing of foreign language learners’IL pragmatic competence mainly depends on the classroom instruction. Therefore, in a foreign language learning setting, how to develop Chinese college students’IL pragmatic competence is quite necessary and worthwhile.With the help of former researchers and according to the theories of ILP, the paper first explores the IL pragmatic competence from the dimension of definition, domain and scope. Then with the reference of the theories of pragmatics and the elaboration of the relation between the pragmatic competence and pragmatic failure, a questionnaire survey on college students from different grades and majors is carried out. After a statistic data analysis, many valuable findings have been obtained:(1) Chinese college student’s IL pragmatic competence is rather poor, and a high level of IL linguistic competence does not assure them a good level of IL pragmatic competence;(2) Sociapragmatic competence and pragmaligustic competence are two components of IL pragmatic competence, though no obvious difference between them, Chinese college students do a little better in the former than in the latter;(3) English majors are more outstanding than non-English majors in IL pragmatic competence, which means that implicit approach is also valid to develop IL pragmatic competence.Through these analyses, the thesis tries to expose the relationship between linguistic competence and ILP competence. Based on the research on students’ pragmatic competence, this thesis aims to realize the necessity and feasibility to teach pragmatic knowledge and develop students’pragmatic competence. Through the comparison and study, the research hopes to obtain the difficulty to cultivate pragmalinguistic competence and sociapragmatic competence respectively. Based on the distinction between the two pragmatic competences, the researcher will give some pedagogical suggestions to cultivate students’ILP. And these pedagogical instructions would be implemented in the pragmatics-oriented activities in classroom. These pragmatic instructions help to raise students’IL pragmatics awareness, motivate students’subjective initiative and promote interaction and cooperation between students and teachers. At last but not least, the thesis also refers to the limitation of the research and suggestions for further research.