A Study Of Pragmatic Failures In Junior Middle School Students' English Conversations

The ultimate goal of English teaching is to help students develop comprehensive ability to use English effectively and appropriately.However,due to the influence of traditional teaching ideas and prevailing examination-oriented education,English teachers always attach great emphasis to the teaching of the language knowledge and neglect the instruction of pragmatic knowledge.Hence,some pragmatic failures frequently occur in middle school students' English communications.Pragmatic failure refers to utterances which are expressed in an inappropriate manner or an improper time,or fail to conform to the social or cultural conventions of the target language,and thus pragmatic failures would lead to communication breakdowns.The consequence of pragmatic failure is even worse than grammatical errors sometimes,so it is necessary to make researches on pragmatic failures of middle school students.This study attempts to make an investigation of the pragmatic failures of junior middle school students,aiming to find out the causes of the frequent pragmatic failures in English conversations made by junior middle school students so as to put forward suggestions for improving students' pragmatic competence.Three research instruments are used in the study: questionnaire,pragmatic competence test and classroom observation.And 151 students in Yantai No.10 Junior Middle School are chosen as the participants.The study attempts to explore what kinds of pragmatic failures that junior middle school students frequently make in English conversations and the main factors that lead to these pragmatic failures.Therefore,in order to find the answers to these questions,the data obtained from the pragmatic competence test,classroom observation and questionnaire are analyzed.Based on the analysis,some major findings have been made: the students' pragmatic competence is generally poor and weak and the frequency of students' pragmatic failures is very high especially in requests,compliments,farewell,greeting and so on.Some factors which contribute to students' pragmatic failures can be concluded as follows: Firstly,most of the junior middle school students lack cultural backgroundknowledge and the awareness of cultural differences.Secondly,the negative transfer of L1 heavily influences students' pragmatic competence.Thirdly,students' linguistic knowledge in their mind is insufficient which hinders their communications.At last,the improper teaching materials and inflexible teaching methods directly affect students' learning of pragmatic knowledge.Based on the causes of junior middle school students' pragmatic failures,some practical suggestions to reduce students' pragmatic failures and improve students' pragmatic competence are put forward.First of all,teachers should create more real language learning environments and enhance the input of authentic material which will help students to overcome the negative transfer of L1 and expand their culture knowledge.Meanwhile,the explicit teaching of pragmatic knowledge should be increased in the English class.Lastly,English teachers' and textbook compliers' pragmatic awareness should be improved.