A Study Of The Relationship Between English Learning Motivation And Pragmatic Competence Of Non-English Majors

Since the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to enable learners to communicate successfully in the real world, and pragmatic competence is an important component of communicative competence, language learners’pragmatic competence development should be noticed and studied in foreign language acquisition. Motivation is assumed to be one of the many factors influencing second language pragmatic competence development (Kasper&Rose,2002). Acculturation Model and Cognitive Processing are used to explain the effect of motivation in pragmatic competence development from a theoretical perspective. Researcn on the relationship between motivation and pragmatic competence has produced delightful results (Du Min,2004; An Xin Ying,2006; Chen Xiao Jing,2007; Lin Min,2008; Li Yong Fang,2009; Mu Xiang Rui,2011).The present study attempts to investigate into the relationship between motivation and pragmatic competence of English learners in Chinese context, in hope that it will produce more infomation about second language pragmatic competence development. With reference to research methods in former studies, the current study examines four motivational variables, namely attitude towards pragmatic learning, motivational intensity, cultural orientation, and instrumental orientation,along with their correlations with pragmatic competence.The study selects113non-English majors as subjects in the survey. The research results reveal a correlation between motivation and pragmatic competence. No significant correlation is found between cultural orientation and pragmatic competence. The reason might be that the students have not spent much time practicing communicating in English with native speakers of English, although they have a great interest in English culture. Instrumental orientation is positively correlated with pragmatic competence, especially with pragmalinguistic competence.Based on the above findings, the current study concludes that motivation can influence pragmatic competence development. In terms of English teaching in China, it is necessary to learn more about students’motivation in classroom settings as well as creating more opportunities for learners to practice communicating in English.