2.3 Significance to grasp the English pragmatic competence
According to interpretation of Widdowson (1989) in linguistic communicative competence, namely, the
communicative competence including the two aspects of grammatical competence and pragmatic competence, it
is not difficult for us to find that correctness of language (grammatical competence) and appropriateness
(pragmatic competence) both play an important role in linguistic communication. Nevertheless, appropriateness
of language seems especially important in actual linguistic communication, because grammar mistake in
communication with a second language can be explained to be nothing more than be non-proficient of the
speaker in the second language, whereas inappropriate expressions with the second language in actual
communication can be deemed as defective quality of the speaker or unfriendly performance of the speaker,
especially in the situation when the speaker is able to speak the second language quite fluently, which might lead
to communicative failure. Thomas (1983) believed that pragmatic failure was an important source for
intercultural communication impediment (Thomas, J., 1983). Therefore, it seems quite important to pay attention
to cultivating students’ pragmatic competence in English teaching. However, in college English teaching in quite
a large number of general undergraduate universities and colleges, acquisition of grammatical knowledge is still
overemphasized, while cultivation of students’ pragmatic competence is still neglected. The author of this article
made a random sampling survey on the English pragmatic competence of students in a general undergraduate
university, and the research result was worrying.