An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence

Successful communication is influenced not only by language accuracy, but also by language appropriateness in various social contexts. Accordingly, second/foreign language (L2) learners‟ pragmatic competence as well as how they develop the competence has attracted much attention in the research fiel...

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Main Authors:	Rui Li, Raja Rozina Raja Suleiman, Azimah Sazalie
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Published:	Penerbit UKM 2015
Online Access:	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8872/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8872/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8872/1/8661-25670-1-PB.pdf

id	ukm-8872
recordtype	eprints
spelling	ukm-88722015-07-05T20:17:27Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8872/ An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence Rui Li, Raja Rozina Raja Suleiman, Azimah Sazalie, Successful communication is influenced not only by language accuracy, but also by language appropriateness in various social contexts. Accordingly, second/foreign language (L2) learners‟ pragmatic competence as well as how they develop the competence has attracted much attention in the research field of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). The existing literature on Chinese EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence focuses on their awareness of contextually appropriate language and neglects their production of the language. This study investigated Chinese EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence in terms of both awareness and production. Three research instruments were employed to collect data: a multiple-choice discourse completion task (MDCT), a written discourse completion task (WDCT), and a retrospective interview. Eight-five English major undergraduates from a university in China participated in the study. The results showed that Chinese EFL learners‟ ability to identify and produce contextually appropriate utterances needed to be promoted, and their pragmatic awareness was found to be positively correlated with their production. Compared with the ranking of imposition, Chinese EFL learners were more aware of the interlocutor‟s social power and tried to display the power distance in their language. However, they had difficulties in using appropriate strategies and linguistic features to achieve communicative intentions, and a very serious problem that they encountered was the intended meaning and force of different linguistic forms and strategies. The research findings provide evidence that Chinese EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence is still much influenced by Chinese language and culture, and some form of pragmatic instruction to raise their awareness or understanding of pragmatic features and force relation is crucial for the learning of L2 pragmatics. Penerbit UKM 2015-06 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8872/1/8661-25670-1-PB.pdf Rui Li, and Raja Rozina Raja Suleiman, and Azimah Sazalie, (2015) An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies, 15 (2). pp. 101-118. ISSN 1675-8021 http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/archive
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	Universiti Kebangasaan Malaysia
building	UKM Institutional Repository
collection	Online Access
language	English
description	Successful communication is influenced not only by language accuracy, but also by language appropriateness in various social contexts. Accordingly, second/foreign language (L2) learners‟ pragmatic competence as well as how they develop the competence has attracted much attention in the research field of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). The existing literature on Chinese EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence focuses on their awareness of contextually appropriate language and neglects their production of the language. This study investigated Chinese EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence in terms of both awareness and production. Three research instruments were employed to collect data: a multiple-choice discourse completion task (MDCT), a written discourse completion task (WDCT), and a retrospective interview. Eight-five English major undergraduates from a university in China participated in the study. The results showed that Chinese EFL learners‟ ability to identify and produce contextually appropriate utterances needed to be promoted, and their pragmatic awareness was found to be positively correlated with their production. Compared with the ranking of imposition, Chinese EFL learners were more aware of the interlocutor‟s social power and tried to display the power distance in their language. However, they had difficulties in using appropriate strategies and linguistic features to achieve communicative intentions, and a very serious problem that they encountered was the intended meaning and force of different linguistic forms and strategies. The research findings provide evidence that Chinese EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence is still much influenced by Chinese language and culture, and some form of pragmatic instruction to raise their awareness or understanding of pragmatic features and force relation is crucial for the learning of L2 pragmatics.
format	Article
author	Rui Li, Raja Rozina Raja Suleiman, Azimah Sazalie,
spellingShingle	Rui Li, Raja Rozina Raja Suleiman, Azimah Sazalie, An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence
author_facet	Rui Li, Raja Rozina Raja Suleiman, Azimah Sazalie,
author_sort	Rui Li,
title	An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence
title_short	An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence
title_full	An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence
title_fullStr	An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence
title_full_unstemmed	An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence
title_sort	investigation into chinese efl learners’ pragmatic competence
publisher	Penerbit UKM
publishDate	2015
url	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8872/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8872/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8872/1/8661-25670-1-PB.pdf
first_indexed	2023-09-18T19:53:21Z
last_indexed	2023-09-18T19:53:21Z
_version_	1777406366020796416

An investigation into Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence

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