A Survey And Analysis Of Non-English Majors’ Pragmatic Failure In Oral English

In the long run, teachers in universities and colleges do not value the cultivation of students’pragmatic competence due to the limitation of such subjective and objective conditions as teaching belief, teaching level, teaching conditions and the demand for college English by social environment. Therefore, this thesis aims at investigating non-English majors’ pragmatic failure in oral English through an experiment,120EFL students in Yanbian University are chosen as the subjects of this study and given questionnaires to know the current situations of their pragmatic failure and pragmatic competence in oral English. Two classes are chosen as the experimental class and the control one. In the experimental class, students are taught pragmatic knowledge and cultural knowledge of English-speaking countries in class teaching, in order to make them reduce pragmatic failure rate or avoid pragmatic failure in their oral English, while traditional teaching methods are used in the control class. In the end, by analyzing questionnaire2, it can be seen whether the cultural and pragmatic teaching can help the students reduce pragmatic failure rate, even avoid it and improve their pragmatic competence.The findings of the present study is as follows:(1) The serious problems of pragmatic failure is still exiting in non-English majors’oral English, although they have had learned English for a long time.(2) Non-English majors mainly make the following pragmatic failure in their oral English:addressing words, greeting words, gratitude and response, request and response, offer and response, compliment and response, apology and response.(3) By teaching English pragmatic knowledge and cultural knowledge of English-speaking countries in college English class, non-English majors can be helped to reduce or avoid their pragmatic failure in oral English.