| In this century, with the development of globalization and international cooperation and communication in China, it needs more internationalized talents, which unprecedentedly challenges the current university talents training mode. Colleges and universities not only need to cultivate better professionals, but also to train talents with higher intercultural competence. Now "Intercultural Competence(ICC)" has become a core topic of academic research, and how to evaluate and improve students’ intercultural competence has also become the research focus of the colleges and universities on the training model of internationalized talents.Over the past40years, the term "Intercultural Competence (ICC)" remains to be lack of unified definition and components, and the traditional evaluation method on it cannot evaluate the intercultural competence comprehensively and systematically.Currently, how to evaluate the intercultural competence is particularly urgent. Thus, this study constructs a series of ICC dimension and evaluation scale for Chinese College Students, comprehensive evaluation index system of ICC and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model, which have important theoretical significance in the study of ICC. Meanwhile, the application of ICC dimension and evaluation scale for Chinese College Students and ICC fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model for analyzing the key factors affecting ICC (awareness, attitude, knowledge, skills) can not only provide a reference for the internationalized talents training in colleges and universities as well as the curriculum design about ICC training, but provide the references for the selection, appointment and performance evaluation of internationalized talents, which is of practical significance. To construct a series of ICC dimension and evaluation scale for Chinese College Students, comprehensive evaluation index system of ICC and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model, the samples of this study are college students and intercultural scholars and experts, the main data collection methods are questionnaire(qualitative) and interview(quantitative) and the main data analysis instruments are factor analysis, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), Delphi method, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation and correlation analysis and application study. Based on Bram’s(1997) ICC multi-dimensional model and Fantini’s(2000,2006) intercultural competence self-evaluation questionnaire and the questionnaire assessing intercultural competence(AIC) from the research project of the Federation of the Experiment in International Living(FEIL) as well as the actual situation of Chinese college students, the designed questionnaire scale constructs a series of evaluation scale for China’s College Students with four dimensions and sixty descriptive items. After a small-scale pilot study of college students with the application of factor analysis for factors extraction, the ICC evaluation scale has been modified to consist of four dimensions and forty descriptive items. The main content, specific ideas and research findings of this study include the following aspects:Firstly, this paper introduces the background and significance of the ICC study, recalls intercultural communication theory, intercultural competence theory, fuzzy set theory and reviews relevant intercultural studies at home and abroad, and then analyzes the weakness of previous studies, finally raises the research questions. Secondly, selecting the1050students from Grade one to Grade four of seven national comprehensive universities as the research subjects, the study investigates and analyzes their ICC, and the research findings show that Chinese college students believe that their knowledge of foreign cultures is inadequate, with the unwilling to take the initiative to adjust their behavior to adapt to the foreigners when communicating with foreign people and the deficiency of foreign languages skills to communicate successfully. Thirdly, in order to construct an ICC dimension and evaluation scale for Chinese College Students, this study randomly selects447sophomores of five national comprehensive universities as the research subjects to conduct an empirical investigation, systematically and comprehensively analyzes the dimensions such as awareness, attitudes, knowledge, skills in Chinese College Students’ ICC. It also constructs a Chinese College Students’ evaluation scale for ICC with the high reliability and validity by explorative and confirmative factor analysis. The scale includes six major factors:cultural knowledge of self, cultural knowledge of others, attitudes, intercultural communication skills, intercultural cognitive skills and awareness. The findings claim that the localized ICC Evaluation Scale for Chinese College Students has been proved to have high reliability and validity in the actual measurement and Chinese College Students’ICC is multidimensional. The six factors play different roles in the assessment and interpretation of Chinese College Students’ ICC. Among the six factors, knowledge of others is the most decisive one, which is followed by intercultural communication skills. Intercultural cognitive skills play a rather weak role, and intercultural awareness the weakest one. Fourthly, in order to determine the ICC evaluation index and index weights, this study constructs the ICC comprehensive evaluation index system by collecting the feedback of the ICC scholars and experts through questionnaires and interviews, and constructs ICC fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model by using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. Finally, to testify the practicality, reliability, stability and maneuverability of this evaluation model, this study selects240sophomores of Huazhong University of Science and Technology as the evaluation subjects, and uses the localized ICC evaluation scale for Chinese College Students to collect their self-assessment data, and then employs ICC fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model to calculate the scores of their cross-cultural competence, finally analyzes the relationship between their ICC and foreign language skills. The results of the model show that the ICC index system and ICC evaluation model are of good application results. Meanwhile, the results of ICC comprehensive evaluation demonstrates that the majority of students believe that their intercultural competence are in an average or medium level, and their level of intercultural competence varies with the positive results of scores, but the amount of variation is small. In addition, in order to analyze the relationship between language skills and ICC of the subjects, the study conducts correlation analysis on their CET4scores and ICC comprehensive evaluation scores and finds that there is a significant correlation between them, but the correlation coefficient is relatively low. Moreover, knowledge from the foreign cultures, attitude and intercultural communication skills have a significant correlation with foreign language ability, while knowledge from the host cultures, intercultural cognitive skills and awareness have no apparent direct relationship with it. Thus, this study could provide some references for the teaching objectives and methods of training college students’ICC in foreign language teaching and learning. However, the follow-up study also needs to combine more different subjects for logitudinal and latitudinal study to further empirically analyze the validity and reliability of the localized ICC evaluation scale and its ICC comprehensive evaluation model, and employs other data collection methods such as real-time interviews, task performance observation and ICC tests to conduct a comprehensive evaluation. |
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