The present study is designed to investigate the relationship between pragmatic transfer and foreign language proficiency so as to test the hypotheses of previous researchers on this issue.The result indicates that evidence of pragmatic transfer exists in the refusals of learners’English at all three proficiency levels.Furthermore,pragmatic transfer increases as learners’proficiency increases.This phenomenon is possibly related to the traditional English teaching mode in China which put much attention to grammar and form instead of communicative and pragmatic competence development.To solve such problem,pragmatic instruction of English need be advocated:learners’pragmatic awareness should be developed as early as possible and pragmatic knowledge need be added all through the process of language teaching.