The Cultivation Of Students’ Pragmatic Competence Of Non-English Major

With the development of economy and society, the communication between different countries is becoming more and more frequent. At present, English is still the most used language. More and more people are paying attention to English learning and English teaching. However, for college students at school, classroom teaching is the main way of learning knowledge for them. In the long term, our traditional teaching methods pay more attention to the teaching of linguistic knowledge and ignore the cultivation of pragmatic competence. The Speech Act Theory requires students to not only have the basic knowledge of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, and the basic skills of listening, speaking, reading and translating, but also pragmatic competence of a certain degree as well as reference and judgment abilities of rather degree. So, it is very important to cultivate students’pragmatic competence. Therefore, the paper discusses the cultivation of students’pragmatic competence in English teaching in universities on the base of the Speech Act Theory in pragmatics. The research questions are put forward about the phenomena that the pragmatic competence of the students of non-English major in vocational colleges is not strong.1. Do students realize the importance of cultivating pragmatic competence?2. Can the application of the Speech Act Theory improve students’ pragmatic competence3. What is the attitude of students towards the application of the Speech Act Theory to cultivate and improve students’pragmatic competence?In the research, the subjects, the students of Class One and Class Three are non-English majors form Jinzhou Teachers’ Training College in the year of2011. The valid data are collected by using the methods of questionnaire and test. Then, the data from the two questionnaires and the two tests in the pre-test and the post-test are analyzed and discussed by using the software SPSS. The results in Post-test show that:The rate that students realize the importance of cultivating pragmatic competence in Post-test is higher than that in Pre-test.Students’pragmatic competence of Experimental Class is more greatly improved than that of Control Class.There are more students agree with the application of the Speech Act Theory to cultivate and improve students’ pragmatic competence in post-test in Experimental Class.Through the analysis and discussion about the data and statistics from the questionnaires and tests, the conclusion can be made:1. Students realize the importance of cultivating pragmatic competence.2. In English teaching in universities, the application of the Speech Act Theory can improve students’pragmatic competence.3. Students agree with the application of the Speech Act Theory to cultivate and improve students’ pragmatic competence in English teaching in universities.Therefore, in English teaching process, teachers should pay attention to the application of the Speech Act Theory to cultivate and improve students’ pragmatic competence of non-English major in English teaching. It includes the following aspects:blending cultural knowledge in English teaching; combining pragmatic knowledge with teaching of language form and creating good context as well as combining language form and function with class activity. The comparison of cultural differences is in favor of reducing pragmatic failure and communicating successfully. Pragmatic knowledge is in favor of students’ correctly understanding others’ meaning of speech acts and tactfully communicating with others. The creation of good context can make students directly practice and cultivate their pragmatic competence.At the end of the paper, the limitations and suggestions for further research are put forward on the cultivation of students’ pragmatic competence in future.