Conversational Implicature Instruction as a Pedagogical Strategy for English Majors in a Chinese Context: A Pragmatic-Analysis of Its Effectiveness

Authors

  • Shifang Li Shanghai University of Political Science and Law

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1110.16

Keywords:

conversational implicature instruction, pragmatic-analysis, effectiveness, listening teaching, listening comprehension ability

Abstract

In English teaching, teachers have always attached great importance to exploring scientific listening teaching methods to improve students' listening comprehension ability. In order to improve the listening teaching mode, scholars in both China and in other countries have done a series of studies. However, there is little research on the effectiveness of conversational implicature in improving listening comprehension ability of English majors. Therefore, through empirical research, this paper explores the effectiveness of applying the Conversational Implicature Theory in pragmatics to instruct English majors to improve their listening comprehension ability, and tries to find an efficient teaching strategy of conversational implicature. The two classes are used as the experimental class and the control class respectively in this experiment. The experimental class adopts Conversational Implicature Teaching Strategy, while the control class still adopts the traditional teaching mode. The results show that the ability of conversational implicature inference of the experimental class is obviously better than that of the control class, which can effectively improve the listening comprehension level of the students. The results of the study provide some enlightenment for the implementation of conversational implicature teaching strategies in similar environments, and some suggestions for listening teaching of English majors are put forward based on the results of the study.

Author Biography

Shifang Li, Shanghai University of Political Science and Law

School of Languages and Cultures

References

Bouton, L. F (1990). The effective use of implicature in English: Why and how it should be taught in the ESL Classroom //Bouton L F.Kachru Y.Pragmatics and Language Learning. Illinois: Division of English as an International Language, University of Illinois at Urbana-Chmpaign, (1): 43-52.

Bouton, L. F (1994). Conversational implicature in a second language: Learned slowly when not deliberately taught. Journal of Pragmatics, (22):157-167.

Brown, G.&Yule. G. (1983). Teaching the Spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Buckhoff, M. (2011) Teaching Students Implied Meaning for TOEFL Preparation Listening [EB/OL]. (09), 12. http://buckhoff. topcities.com/ UCRpresentation.htm [retrieval time: 2021-03-12].

Grice H P. (1975). Logic and conversation. // Cole P, Morgan J. Syntax and Semantics, Vol.3: Speech Acts.New York: Academic Press, 41-58.

Harris, J. & Chen, R. (1994) Understanding Implicature and the ESL Program. Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He Zhaoxiong, Yu Dongming, Hong Gang,et al. (2000 ). A new outline of pragmatics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

He Ziran. (1997). Pragmatics and English learning. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

Hong Gang. (1991). A survey of English pragmatic competence and its implications for foreign language teaching. Foreign language teaching and research, (4):56-60.

Horn, L. R. (1984). Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature//Schiffrin, D. Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications. Washington D C: Georgetown University Press, 11-42.

Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics.London: Longman.

Levinson, S.C. (1987). Pragmatics and the grammar of anaphora: A partial pragmatic reduction of binding and control phenomena. Journal of Linguistics, (23) :379-434.

Liu Shijuan, Sun Bian Qi. (2006). Conversational meaning in English listening. Journal of Shanxi Normal University: Social Science Edition (6):135-137.

Xu Shenghuan. (1993). New development of conversational implicature theory. Modern foreign languages, (2):7-15.

Downloads

Published

2021-10-01

Issue

Section

Articles