A Study On Pragmatic Awareness And Grammatical Awareness Of Chinese EFL Learners

Since 1970 s,foreign language researchers and teachers have paid more and more attention to the cultivation of learners' language awareness,especially pragmatic awareness(PA)and grammatical awareness(GA).Schmidt's noticing hypothesis focuses on the awareness or attention of learners.Despite considerable research on the language awareness of adult learners,less attention has been paid to learners at different learning stages.The present study focuses on Chinese EFL learners of varying language proficiency levels at different stages of learning.This study examines the developmental patterns of pragmatic awareness and grammatical awareness and explores its influencing factors.A total of 338 Chinese EFL learners in Jiangxi province participated in this research,including 114 of high school,115 of university,and 109 of postgraduate.Three kinds of data eliciting instruments were adopted,namely,an English Proficiency test,a questionnaire of pragmatic and grammatical judgment task(PGJT)and a related structured personal interview.This study combined the analysis of quantitative questionnaire data with qualitative interview data.The results indicate that both PA and GA of Chinese EFL of varying language proficiency levels are significantly different at different stages of learning.As English learning goes on,pragmatic awareness of learners displays a linear-rise trend,while grammatical awareness develops in the trajectory of a low level to the climax and then a gradual decrease.L1 awareness,learning environment and learners' developmental difference are the main factors shaping the developmental patterns of PA and GA.The imbalanced development between grammatical awareness and pragmatic awareness at different learning stage has validated the phased and dynamic characteristics of the development of language awareness.According to the identified influencing factors in this study,different teaching methods in English teaching should be adopted according to different learning stages and language proficiency.In any stage of language learning,language accuracy at the expense of fluency is not desirable;learners' grammatical and pragmatic awareness should be coordinated.