A Survey Of Pragmatic Failures In English Communication Between Chinese Korean Students And Han Students At University

Pragmatic failure is not only a significant issue in linguistics and language teaching but also a common phenomenon in cross-cultural communication. The communication among people from different countries or different ethnic groups is a kind of cross-cultural communication and pragmatic failures would appear in the communication. One of the teachers’important aims is to teach the learners how to use the correct communication method, avoid pragmatic failures and communicate successfully. Scholars at home and abroad put forward some effective strategies for language learners to improve their pragmatic competence and reduce their pragmatic failures. However, the previous studies abroad have few experimental data while domestic studies are only concerning the pragmatic failures in verbal communication or non-verbal communication separately. Among these studies, few are about the Chinese Koreans.This study, conducted at a university in northeastern China, mainly examines the non-English majors’(both Chinese Korean students and Han students) pragmatic failures in both verbal and non-verbal communication. Questions are as follows:(1) what is the current situation of the cross-cultural communication competence of university students of Chinese Korean and Han nationality?(2) what is the result of the pragmatic competence test (in verbal communication)?(3) what is the result of the pragmatic competence test(in non-verbal communication)?(4) what are the reasons for the current situation? The study integrates quantitative and qualitative researches and applies multiple methods such as testing and questionnaire to collect data. It takes7weeks to finish the whole survey.After the data are collected, they are analyzed by SPSS20.0immediately. The results indicate that the average pragmatic competence of the subjects is still in a poor level. The pragmatic competence of Han students is a little higher than that of the students of Chinese Koreans. But in the non-verbal communication, the Chinese Korean students have higher scores. Students of both Chinese Korean and Han nationality fail a lot in verbal communication test. While Korean students fail more than Han students. However, students fail less in non-verbal communication test, and Han students fail more than Chinese Korean students.The causes of pragmatic failure of university students can be mainly divided into the perspectives of culture, language and education. The university students are poor at the pragmatic competence and awareness. There is little pragmatic knowledge in classroom teaching and text books. At last, according to results of this survey and the features of this area, some suggestions are given from the aspect of students and teaching.