A Study On The Pragmatic Failure Of Primary School English Teachers And Their Solutions

As China has gradually become predominant in the world economy,more and more requirements of students' English language competence are needed to meet the demand for communications with different countries in the world.Primary school English teachers have undoubtedly acted as both torchbearers and initiators,whose pragmatic competence has strong impacts on the students' English learning.With the frequent pragmatic failures of a primary school English teacher in class,it is easy for students to acquire some language knowledge,but it can hardly be applied in real communications with authentic English.In our country,the research on pragmatic competence has been implemented for no more than thirty years.In recent years,although many studies have done in-depth research in pragmatic competence,most of them are from the perspective of students instead of teachers.In fact,only few researches are targeting at pragmatic failures of primary school teachers.This study will start with the pragmatic failure of the primary school English teachers via questionnaires,classroom observations,literature reviews and analysis,etc.,and then mainly solve the following problems:1.What are the pragmatic consciousness and pragmatic competence of English teachers in primary schools?2.What are the causes for the pragmatic failure of English teachers in primary schools?Based on literature review,questionnaire test and classroom observation,this paper investigates the pragmatic competence of 68 English teachers in a district of Nanjing,and classifies the types of errors.The results show that the primary school English teachers'classroom pragmatic failure is due to the lack of attention to teaching progress and process in details,classroom pragmatic effectiveness and,insufficient time for primary school teachers to improve effective classroom pragmatics.Finally,according to the above reasons it provides with some possibilities in improving teachers' language proficiency and cultural literacy,increasing teachers' awareness of English teaching,enhancing teachers' pragmatic competence in practice,strengthening teachers' pragmatic knowledge and ability training,and conducting more communication and interaction between Chinese English teachers and native English teachers or speakers,etc.