1.4 Organization of the book

Besides the introduction to the motivations,objectives,and significance of the study in Chapter One,the research will proceed with five other chapters.

Chapter two mainly exposes the existing issues in current FL/EFL education,and of these issues,defining the teaching and learning objective is one of the main problems in FL/EFL education.A literature review of second or foreign language teaching and interlanguage pragmatics indicates that the solution to the problem of defining the teaching and learning objective relies on the understanding of pragmatic competence which has been widely accepted as one of the main components of communicative competence.Actually,although the discipline of interlanguage pragmatics has been established for more than 20 years,there still exists insufficient interpretation of pragmatic competence,especially in second or foreign language education.The issue and the critical role of pragmatic competence in FL/EFL education can be seen from two investigations:one is the emergence and development of ILP study and pragmatic competence as a core issue both in pragmatics and applied linguistics; the other is that the study of pragmatic competence gives credence to the distinction between the terms of SL/ESL and FL/EFL.

Chapter three discusses the concept of pragmatic competence in the studies of communicative competence and language proficiency in linguistics and applied linguistics.Having enquired into these two areas of the research,a comprehensive construct of pragmatic competence from a cognitive approach is considered.Correspondingly,the chapter consists of four sections which are:the concept of pragmatic competence in the theoretical development of language or communicative competence,pragmatic competence as the source of various models advanced for language competence conceptualization,the distinctive features reflected in different interpretations and models of communicative competence and language proficiency,and a reconsideration of the construct of pragmatic competence from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.

Chapter four is about the formulation of the theoretical basis and support for the cognitive approach to the construct of pragmatic competence.The issues involved are:1）pragmatic theories applied to the traditional interpretation of pragmatic constructs;2）a cognitive linguistics approach to the study of pragmatics;3）the theoretical significance of a socio-cognitive approach to pragmatics（SCA）for the theme of this research;4）the theoretical explanation for a cognitive approach to the construct of pragmatic competence in EFL teaching.

Chapter five is an experimental test which examines the validation of approaching the construct of pragmatic competence from cognitive linguistics in the Chinese EFL context.It mainly checks whether the extended constructs of pragmatic competence we have proposed reflect the FL/EFL learners' weak points in target language learning.It also presents the discussions and analyses based on the results of the experimental test.

Chapter six serves as a conclusion of this book including the general summary of the research,implications for foreign language education,limitations of the research and directions for future studies.