A Case Study Of Senior High Students' Pragmatic Competence In Spoken English

It goes without saying that pragmatic competence carries great importance in English learning.As Walton(1992:1)stressed,“In truly foreign language teaching and learning,pragmatic competence or behavioral culture is key to the mastery of linguistic code.” In addition,pragmatic competence has recently been put forward in the new national high school English curriculum(2017:29)which points out that pragmatic knowledge refers to the knowledge of understanding others accurately and expressing oneself appropriately in a certain context.The accuracy of grammar use doesn't mean the effective use of language in that the effective use of language involves the intentions,emotion and attitude of speakers.Meanwhile,the understanding of the participants' roles and status in certain contexts is crucial as well.All the factors have everything to do with pragmatic awareness and pragmatic knowledge.However,little attention has been paid to the issues associated with improving learners' pragmatic competence compared with the priority the linguistic knowledge enjoyed all the time in high schools.Hence,there is every good reason to take on this topic.The paper aims to analyze the current situation of senior high students' English pragmatic competence.Besides,the difference on pragmatic competence between genders,between low and high English test scoring students and the causes for students' poor pragmatic performance are expected to be found in this research as well.Based on the data and analysis,this paper expects to find out what particular component of pragmatic competence that needs to be improved for senior high students.The participants of the research are 150 second graders who come from Longquan NO.1 High School in Chengdu.The methods of questionnaire and interviews are applied in the research.The questionnaire is made up of 20 questions,which can basically capture a whole picture of the participants' pragmatic competence.Besides,participants' linguistic competence is reflected by the result of Chengdu Research English Test of Senior Grade Two.Finally,the interview is set to diagnose participants' attitude towards pragmatic competence and to function as the supplementary data for some particular items in questionnaire.The author,through the research,finds that the current pragmatic competence situation of senior high students is still not optimistic.And students perform worst in factors about speech act.In addition,students with a lack of pragmatic knowledge find it difficult to express in an appropriate way in certain contexts.What's more,female students in high school have a higher pragmatic competence than male students.And students with higher language proficiency have a higher pragmatic competence.