Pragmatic Teaching And Learning In Junior English Majors In The Background Of English As A Lingua Franca

With the construction of the Belt and Road and the international influence of the community of shared future for mankind,as well as the expanding scope of communication,English has become more widely used as an international lingua franca,and the changing role of English in the world has influenced the concept of English teaching and learning.In the context of English as a lingua franca(ELF),the pragmatic competence of English majors has attracted more attention.Therefore,this study intends to explore the differences in pragmatic competence between freshmen and sophomores that major in English and investigate the current situation of pragmatic teaching and learning among English majors in different grades.Specific research questions are presented below.(1)What is the current situation of pragmatic knowledge of junior English majors?(2)Is there any difference of students' pragmatic competence in different grades? If so,what are the differences?(3)In the context of ELF,what aspects of pragmatic competence should junior English majors pay more attention to and how can they improve their pragmatic competence based on pragmatic teaching and learning?Based on speech acts theory,conversational implicature,politeness and relevance theories,this study was conducted by using questionnaire and classroom observation.A total of 160 junior English majors from four different types of universities including comprehensive,normal,linguistic and science and engineering universities were selected to conduct a questionnaire survey on pragmatic competence.According to the research questions,the researcher compiled and encoded the data collected by questionnaire and analyzed by Excel and SPSS 16.0.And classroom observation was conducted from junior English majors who had the questionnaire survey in Southwest University in order to identify students' pragmatic competence in a real classroom environment and the influence of the current situation of pragmatic teaching on students' pragmatic competence.Finally,the researcher drew a conclusion and put forward some suggestions for pragmatic teaching and learning.The results of this study are as follows.(1)Junior English majors have basic pragmatic knowledge,but there is a lack of knowledge of speech acts in request,greeting,refusal and advice,as well as the knowledge of indirectness and sociolinguistic knowledge.However,from classroom observation,it can be seen that students' ability to use pragmatic knowledge,namely functional knowledge and sociolinguistic knowledge,is not up to the standard level of English majors(grade 7 of scale),so students in the lower grades of English majors need to carry out pragmatic teaching to lay the foundation for the cultivation of pragmatic ability in the future.(2)There are differences in pragmatic competence between freshmen and sophomores,which are reflected in two aspects that only in politeness freshmen a bit exceeds sophomores while sophomores have a good knowledge of speech acts,especially in request,apology,greeting,compliment and response,as well as conversational organization.In the classroom practice,the competence of sophomores is higher than the freshmen in understanding the speaker's intention,expressing personal opinions and appropriateness,especially in understanding the other's intention.(3)Both freshmen and sophomores need to strengthen their ability of speech acts which contains request,greeting,refusal,advice,and indirectness of language,conversational organization skills.Also,they all need to pay attention to the ability to express personal intentions and appropriateness of language by continuously strengthening the functions of knowledge and sociolinguistic knowledge,cultivating ability to use strategies immediately and properly.In addition,freshmen should enhance their ability to understand the speaker's intention and teachers should highlight the design of explicit pragmatic teaching to attract students' attention and improve students' pragmatic awareness.Based on the results of this study,researcher put forward the following three suggestions on pragmatic teaching and learning in the background of English as a lingua franca: Firstly,different pragmatic courses should be set up according to the pragmatic competence in different grades.Secondly,students should learn different cultures and integrate Chinese culture into language learning on the basis of seriously learning native English rules so that different pragmatic strategies can be used according to different cultural backgrounds,interlocutors(different social distance and power)and differentcontexts.Thirdly,teachers should combine different pragmatic teaching methods to improve students' sensitivity and empathy awareness in pragmatic teaching,then cultivate students' ability to perceive cultural differences and flexible intercultural communication ability by creating different contexts.