Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of pragmaticdeixis on
improving oral communication among University English Majors. (A case Study
of the four yearEnglish major students, Faculties of Arts and Education,University
of Al-Fashir). The aim is to improve oral communication among the sample of the
study. The researcher used the experimental and the descriptive analytical methods
to conduct the study. Two Tools have been used to collect the required data,
namely a questionnaire which was given to (50) tutors of English language from
different Sudanese universities to investigate their perception about theactual role
of deixis in oral communication, and a pre-test and post-test thatwere given to
(60)University English majors whowere divided into a control group and
experimental group. The study hypothesized that teacher talk may have a positive
effect on students' understanding tothe role of deixis inoral communication.
English major students use gesture to decode the meaning of deictic expressions in
oral communication. It is also hypothesized that students use symbols to refer to
deixis in oral communication. The deictic center may have a negative effect on
students' abilities to refer to entities in oral communication.The context may have
an important role in decoding the meaning of deixis in oral communication. The
mean scores of the pre-test and the post-test of the two groups were calculated
using T-test. The findings of the study revealed that there was statistically
significant differences between the means of two groups in favor of the
experimental group whichwas (P=.002 is less than .05) at T.test equals
3.54.Finally, the study recommends that teachers should train students on deictic
expressions through authentic communicative situations because the meaning of
each conversation depends on thesedeictic expressions to make effective
communication.Sincedeixis functions as a cohesive devices in spoken discourse
teachers have to use it effectively in English classroom to promote students'
listening and speakingabilities.
