| In1892, German philosopher Frege introduced the conception of presupposition. Since then, it has been a significant topic in linguistics. However, pragmatic presupposition has long been neglected in ESL writing teaching in China. Some problems exist in ESL writing teaching about pragmatic presupposition studies. Taking these problems into consideration, this paper attempts to study the role of pragmatic presupposition in ESL writing so as to help students make a coherent discourse, and improve their writing ability.This study draws lessons from the theories of domestic and foreign linguists and scholars including the theories of Leech, Levinson, Miao Xingwei, Zhang Keding, and Zhu Yongsheng and so on. These theories exert profound influence on learning and teaching pragmatic presupposition. As a kind of language phenomenon, the functions of presupposition in the discourse cannot be ignored. It makes discourse economic, concise, making sure the cohesion and coherence of sentences and paragraphs and meanwhile it also plays a leading role for the whole discourse and the entire layout. It is well known that writing is such a significant skill of English teaching and is also the measure of students’integrated English level. As college students put most of their time and energy in the memory of English words, they always ignore the English writing training. At the same time, due to the lack of systematic theory guidance, the students’ writing level is not satisfactory, which seriously influences students’ English achievements. Writing plays an essential part in English language skills. Great attention must be paid to English writing teaching from a new perspective. The author tries to establish a systematic framework for applying the theory of pragmatic presupposition to ESL writing teaching to solve the practical teaching problems. This experiment is to apply the theory of pragmatic presupposition to ESL writing teaching of non-English major students. Its main aim is to investigate:Will the application of the theory of pragmatic presupposition contribute to improving students’ writing competence? Is the application of the discourse functions of pragmatic presupposition beneficial to discourse teaching of ESL writing teaching? Can the application of presupposition triggers decrease the errors of ESL writing teaching?The subject of the experiment is the freshmen majored in law of Harbin Normal University. The author arbitrarily chose two classes among them. There are59students in one class and there are71students in the other class. And then the author chose the first50students from these two classes respectively and divide these students into two classes, including50in the experimental class and50in the control class. In the experimental class, the teacher taught the students the theory of pragmatic presupposition directly and led them to apply the theory to their English writing. In the control class, students are not taught the related knowledge about pragmatic presupposition. The teacher focused on teaching the writing skills in the textbook. Pragmatic presupposition is a good way to secure the economy, informativeness and topical coherence of the utterance, contributing more to the organization of the discourse. After one semester’s teaching, the scores of the students in both the experimental class and the control class improved tremendously. And the improvement in the experimental class was more obvious. The students in the experimental class make good use of the discourse functions of pragmatic presupposition and presupposition triggers. The correlation between the pragmatic presupposition and ESL writing teaching is positive.The author applies pragmatic presupposition in English writing teaching, organizing the discourse into a coherent whole, concise, clear and smooth. This paper explores English writing teaching from a new perspective, paving a new way for further discussion about pragmatic presupposition in English writing teaching. |
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