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tions. If students don’t know the real functions of it, they willconfuse the real meaning of it because different settings and different participants willcause different meanings. Thus, this study is designed to make a through investigationon the English progressive aspect, especially its pragmatic functions, hoping todeepen students’ understanding of it as well as helping them use it correctly and freely.Another important aim is to deepen learners' awareness of the pragmatic impact onEnglish progressive aspect, and therefore the appropriateness, of certain devices invarious social contexts. Thus, English progressive aspect and pragmatics are closelyrelated with each other in this way. Ultimately, the choice of whether or not to useEnglish progressive aspect in a appropriate way in the target language must rest withthe learner.

 

1.4 Key Research Questions
The present study aims to investigate the English progressive aspect from itspragmatic functions based on the narrative data, which is chosen from the writtenproduction of Chinese Learner's English Corpus (CLEC). According to the linguistHalliday, “Language varies as its function varies; it differs in different situations.”Thus, the progressive aspect’s pragmatic functions are considered in two aspects—setting and gender. The thesis proposed that different settings and genders have effectson English progressive aspect’s pragmatic functions. Based on this proposal, thethesis is expected to answer the following three research questions:Question 1: What is the Chinese English learner’s overall use of the progressiveaspect?Question 2: How is the distribution of English progressive aspect’s pragmaticfunctions?Question3: What is the effect of age on progressive aspect’s pragmaticfunctions?

 

1.5 The layout of the thesis

This thesis attempts to make a dynamic study on English progressive aspect fromits pragmatic functions. The whole thesis consists of five parts.In the first part, an introduction on the thesis is presented, which includes theresearch orientation, rationale, the significance and purposes of the study, keyresearch questions and the layout of the thesis.In the second part, firstly, basic notions: tense and aspect and pragmaticfunctions; secondly, a dynamic view on English progressive is presented which5includes :progressive in old English, progressive in middle English and the presentday progressive; thirdly, the pragmatic functions of progressive aspect are presented,which includes descriptive function, expressive function, explanatory function andinterim function; fourthly, the related studies of English progressive aspect andpragmatics is displayed; and lastly, a conclusion is made.In the third part, restatement of research questions is presented; then the researchinstruments, which include the Chinese Learner English Corpus and WordSmith tools,are discussed; and then the methodology and data collection is presented; finally dataanalysis is done.In the fourth part, at first, the distribution of progressive aspect in CLEC, whichincludes the frequencies of progressive aspect in CLEC and discussion on the overalluse of progressive aspect, is done. Then, there comes distribution of progressiveaspect’s pragmatic functions, which is composed by two parts: (1) frequencies ofprogressive aspect ’s pragmatic functions in CLEC; and (2)discussion on the overalluse of progressive aspect’ s pragmatic functions. F本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。