Abstract

Pragmatic failure is the inability to understand what is meant by what is said, which can often lead to misunderstanding or confusion in cross-cultural communication. For this reason, the present article explores the contributing factors of pragmatic failure in China’s ELT Classrooms. According to the exploration, the following factors are found out: teacher-centered teaching; lack of authentic input; teaching English without considering the cultural differences; linguistic competence oriented evaluation system. Some effective measures are also put forward to deal with these deficiencies, such as, task-based teaching; authentic English teaching materials and pragmatic competence oriented evaluation system.

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