A Study On Pragmatic Competence Of Senior High Students-based On Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Task In National Matriculation English Test

As one of the components of communicative competence, pragmatic competence plays avital role in the process of communication. By exploiting multiple-choice discoursecompletion task (MDCT) as instrument, the national matriculation English test (NMET) aimsto assess the students’ communicative competence, especially pragmatic competence.However, there is no clear criterion for English teachers to accurately measure therequirements and scope of the pragmatic competence testing in NMET. And there is noinstrument for assessing the students’ pragmatic competence and the pragmatic teachingresults in correspondence with NMET. In China, much less attention has been paid tomultiple-choice discourse completion task as the objective of classroom research. Therefore,it becomes an urgent task to make full use of these testing questions to effectively assess thestudents’ pragmatic competence and guide the pragmatic instruction in senior high school.Based on the framework of Thomas’ pragmatic failure and combined with cooperativeprinciple and politeness rules of pragmatics, this study aims to explore three questions:1)What are the pragmatic characteristics of the MDCT questions in the national matriculationEnglish test?2)What are the common pragmatic problems of senior high students reflected bythe MDCT questions? Finally, according to the characteristics and the students’ pragmaticfailure in MDCT questions, the thesis discusses3) What are the implications for pragmaticteaching and learning in senior high school?We first collect the MDCT questions in the national matriculation English test papers(2004-2013), analyzes the characteristics of these testing questions, identifies their pragmatictesting scope and purposes. Then these questions are reorganized into a pragmatic competencetesting paper which is employed to assess the pragmatic competence of76senior highstudents of grade two from Dalian No.62middle school.To sum up, the result of this study shows that the MDCT questions are wellcorresponding to the part of “Everyday Expressions” in New Curriculum Standards for SeniorHigh English(2003). The testing gives weight to the assessment of pragma-linguisticcompetence. And the appropriate use of phatic expressions is the focus of the assessment onsocio-pragmatic competence. As is shown from the pragmatic competence testing, studentsare lacking of pragmatic strategies and cross-culture awareness.In the last chapter, this study proposes some feasible methods to improve teachers’methodological practice for developing students’ pragmatic competence. The pedagogical implications of this study include: teach pragmatic knowledge in accordance with thecharacteristics and its testing scope of the MDCT questions; cultivate senior high schoolstudents’ pragmatic competence and social pragmatic strategies under the lexical, situationaland cultural contexts.