Pragmatic Competence and Its Development among ESL Learners in Pakistani Context

Abstract

This study analyzes the Pragmatic analysis of English as a Second Language learners in Pakistani context with reference to the practical competence of their compliment response and refusal speech acts. For this purpose, the data was collected from two private Universities of Lahore. The population of the research was post-graduate students from two faculties i.e., Social Sciences and Engineering. The research highlights the difficulties L2 learners face in order to achieve pragmatic competence in an ESL environment. The absence of pragmatic information, lack of natural setting to learn second language, difficulties in real discussions of daily routine, lack of understanding of cultural aspects and deficiency to select appropriate pragmatic approaches in real conversation scenario of speech act are real challenges to L2 learners. The findings of the research depict that L2 learners lack equal competency between linguistic and pragmatic knowledge.