ENHANCING PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE OF STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, VNU

Abstract

In an attempt to help students improve their pragmatic competence, specifically argumentation skills, including giving opinions, showing agreements and disagreements, this action research was carried out. The action research project was carried out in 12 weeks with the subjects of 25 first-year students from Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies. Initial data showed that the majority of students had poor argumentation competence, in other words, they failed to produce effective opinions, agreements and disagreements. In addition, most of them often used the language functions which are of elementary level to express their opinions, agreements and disagreements. Therefore, the researcher implemented an action plan in which students were trained in terms of argumentation skills and language functions to express argumentation. The analysis of the pre-data and post-data showed that students made significance improvement in argumentation skills and language functions by the end of the projects.