The Effect of Study-Abroad on Pragmatic Transfer

This study aims to investigate the effect that studying abroad may have on pragmatic transfer in requests, refusals, and expressions of gratitude, produced by Japanese learners of English. Twentytwo Japanese college students completed a multimedia elicitation task(MET) before and after studying in the US for one semester, together with twenty-two L1 English speakers and twenty L1 Japanese speakers as baseline data. The MET is a computer-based instrument for eliciting oral data.Unlike previous studies on pragmatic transfer, which often lack statistical evidence, this study includes statistical analysis. The analysis revealed that negative pragmatic transfer occurs within a limited range. The identified transfer includes pragmalinguistic transfer, whereby, assuming that their politeness levels are equal, learners directly translate L1 expressions into L2;and sociopragmatic transfer, whereby learners transfer L1 discourse patterns and functions. Resistance to L2 norms and increased fluency can be influencing factors. The results indicated that the effect of study-abroad is limited because most of the negative transfer which was identified before studying abroad remained after studying abroad. Thus, the necessity of explicit pragmatic instruction was proposed.

An Exploration into Pragmatic Failure in EFL Learning

To acquire the real communicative competence for language learners calls for not only the linguistic knowledge but also the ability to use the language appropriately. But many empirical studies have manifested that Chinese learners of English are quite fragile in pragmatic competence. Thus, the author mainly depicts in this paper the necessity of cultivating pragmatic competence and ways to enhance English learners＇ pragmatic competence by exploring into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.

Chinese Learners' Pragmatic Failure in Communication with English Native Speakers

Chinese Learners' pragmatic failure can be divided into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.Pragmalinguistic failure stems from inappropriate pragmalinguistic transfer and teaching-induced errors.Sociopragmatic failure is mainly caused by cross-cultural differences in the assessment of such socio-cultural variables as size of imposition and social distance,and also by the deviation from rules of speaking.Inappropriate teaching materials are also an important cause of Chinese learners' sociopragmatic failure.

Cause Analysis of Sociopragmatic Failure in Intercultural Communication

With the rapid development of science and globalization,communication between people is becoming more and more convenient and flexible.However,communication breakdown still occurs occasionally in the process of intercultural communication.Pragmatics failure is one of the main causes of the bias in intercultural communication.Based on the Jenny Thomas’theory,pragmatic failure is divided into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure,the former is defined as the lack of pragmatic knowledge,while the latter affects more fundamentally the effect of intercultural communication as sociopragmatic failure is caused by the differences in cultural dimensions,ways of thinking,value orientation between speakers.By cognizing and understanding the main causes of pragmatic failures,intercultural speakers could avoid misunderstanding between different cultures and promote their intercultural communicative competence,in order to achieve an effective result of intercultural communication.