Impact of Pragmatic Deixis on Improving Oral Communication among University English Majors

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.