Listening is a very important and challenging part in the teaching of English, and an important standard to measure a personal language comprehensive ability. Grice noticed that in daily conversation people do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them. We seem to follow some principles like the followings: “Make your
conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged ”. And this principle is known as the cooperative principle. Below is the cooperative principle in the application of English listening.
e.g. A: what do you think of my new dress?
B: Oh, you are very beautiful today.
From this example above, B’s answer is a violation of the principle of cooperation relationships criterion. But through the analysis we can find B’s reaction is the right answer to A’s word, so on the form B violates the principle of relation, but in fact, it is just the answer to A’s problem, and B’s answer is much more real in the the conversation context. So when teaching listening, the teachers should pay much attention to the use of the theory of pragmatics, combined with pragmatics knowledge, guide students see the language rich content contained through the language materials. Another example is that the phone rings when the father is washing the dishes, so he wants his kids to answer the phone. But he got the answers as below:
A: But Dad, I’m washing my hair.
B: I’m studying. Linda is watching TV.
C:I’m watching the baseball game, Dad.
Father:Well, I’m washing the dishes. SO SOMEONE ANSWER THE PHONE! According to the dialogue, the three kids didn’t answer their father’ question correctly, but in fact, all of them didn’t want to answer the phone. And the father also couldn’t answer it at that moment. This is the application of principle of politeness in the real communication context.
In order to have a better understanding of the listening materials, the teachers should apply the theory of pragmatics like the cooperative principle to their teaching so as to help students grasp the real intention of the speakers.
2.3 The application of pragmatics in teaching English reading
Relevance theory has explained the psychological cognition process that the information receive how to understand and inferred the information of the senders’ real intention. And reading comprehension is a cognitive psychological process that made by a kind of language through surface infers the deep intention of the information produced. So reading is based on cognitive principles and to use the readers’ own language knowledge and background knowledge to make a positive thinking and reasoning process to the article. This is a subjective, active process. And the key to realizing this initiative is the good use of relevance theory.
But to some extent, the teaching of reading needs to cultivate students’ awareness of improving their pragmatic ability and understanding different cultures. And this is the necessary background information for students when they read some authentic materials. As an English teacher, we should guide our students to promote the degree of language through relevance. And it is necessary for the students to deepen their pragmatic knowledge, for it can help them to grasp some knowledge of western culture and gradually develop communicative competence at the same time. Thus it’s very important to expose our students to the authentic and functional
materials based on some social contexts. Authentic materials mean texts or material which can help learners grasp the usage of language in the real situation. Authentic material are culturally based. They are beneficial for developing learning learners’ culture awareness. However, sometimes in our teaching, this factor has always been ignored in material choosing or homework assigning.
2.4 The application of pragmatics in teaching English speaking
Sperber and Wilson proposed the relevance theory is a relevant language communication theory from cognitive perspective. This theory regards language communication as an express--reasoning process. At the same time, the communication involves the speakers and the hearers for information processing. And realizing the cultural differences can help students avoid some social pragmatic failures in real communication context. In most English spoken countries, one’s age, income, politics and religion are things which are improper to ask of a stranger or a person that one does not know very well. So when communicating with them, our Chinese students should avoid asking such personal questions, which, more or less, is a matter of privacy in western countries. And knowing this cultural differences, the students may have a better chatting when speaking English with native speakers in the real context.
For the students, who are non-native speakers, to use language appropriately in different situations is quite difficult, especially when language is related to culture. Thus, it is the teachers’ job to make students aware that some topics still can be talked about even between strangers. And some useful speaking strategies need to pay more attention to when it comes to the sensitive questions. It is very common that some non-native speakers have some difficulty in starting a topic with native speakers. Sometimes they are not confident about their pronunciation, while in most cases, they just don’t know how to begin a conversation with native speakers naturally.