Jurnal Bahasa dan Budaya China

Intermediate and advanced Chinese learners often fail when communicating in Chinese although they have mastered some language knowledge, due to inappropriate expressions or incorrect understanding about the content of the interlocutor. They are all called typical pragmatic failures. This paper mainly focuses to the situation and causes of Pragma-Linguistic failures by the second and third graders from the Chinese Department of Bunda Mulia University. It uses the methods of testing, interviewing and observation to collect data, and analyzes the students' Pragma-Linguistic failures from four perspectives: phonetics, vocabulary, semantics, and grammar. The study found that the Pragma-Linguistic failures by the students in the two grades were mainly concentrated in vocabulary, and the most frequent failures occurred in three types, which is stress, demonstrative pronouns, and cultural meanings. The reasons can be attributed to the negative transfer of mother tongue (Bahasa Indonesia), cultural differences, teaching problems, students' lack of understanding and mastery of words. It is suggested to improve from three aspects, that is, to create a better classroom language environment, popularize pragmatic knowledge, and apply to the actual situation.