A Survey Study Of Junior High School Students’ English Pragmatic Competence

With the rapid development of world multi-polarization, economic globalization andinformation technology, the role of English becomes more important obviously, whichrequires the students not only to learn linguistic knowledge, but also to improve theirpragmatic competence. Pragmatic competence refers to the ability to use languageappropriately in a specific context. It directly determines the success of communication.This paper selects four grades including433students as subjects who are fromHarbin Xing Guang Middle School. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis ofjunior high school students’ pragmatic competence and a detailed analysis of theirpragmatic failure, some suggestions are put forward to help improve students’ pragmaticcompetence. The survey results show that their pragmatic failure occurs frequently andthe current situation of junior high school students’ English pragmatic competence islower than the expected results and needs to be proved. Their linguistic competence andpragmatic competence have no direct relevance. Students’ pragmatic failure includesboth pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. Pragmatic failure is also foundin verbal and non verbal communication but with different degree, and more failure isfound in their speech act of apology and its response. Some of the possible causes aresummarized as follows: teachers may ignore the cultivation of students’ pragmaticcompetence or the influence of different culture and language, or it is affected byinappropriate teaching techniques or examination-oriented education. So it is suggestedthat we should encourage teachers’ self-improvement in pragmatic competence, arousepragmatic and cultural awareness of teachers and students, make full use of Internet toprovide authentic communication environment, cultivate students’ pragmatic competencewith authentic teaching activities and adopt pragmatics-oriented teaching.