Application Of DMIS In The Teaching Of Language And Culture

Nowadays, the world is experiencing a rapid development in the communication technology and an increasing exchange between different cultures and countries. China's globalization has placed more demands and challenges on schools especially colleges to meet the needs of the society they serve. China is in urgent need of talents who are qualified in their specialty and skillful in intercultural communication. Today, the importance of intercultural communication competence (ICC) is widely recognized in overseas and domestic contexts, and intercultural communication competence has been taken as the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching. Therefore, it is of vital importance for the educators of colleges to arrange purposefully culture teaching to cultivate students'intercultural communication competence.In the traditional foreign language teaching class of China, teachers pay much attention to the mastery of language skills and tend to develop the students'linguistic competence. As a result, the students who have past examination, such as CET4, with high core are still deficient in actual intercultural communication. Therefore,if the instructors teach language without teaching at the same time the culture in which it operates, they are teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which the student attaches the wrong meaning.The thesis introduces the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), which is put forward by Dr. Milton J. Bennett (1986; 1993). He presents a complex model of intercultural communication competence development, framed in terms of the phenomenology of an individual's affective, cognitive, and behavioral construal of, as well as response to, cultural difference. This theory combines the enhancement of intercultural communication competence and the development of intercultural sensitivity, which is intended to guide the culture teaching originally.The thesis is to apply DMIS theory to the practice of culture teaching in China and put forward a practical and systematic methodology and techniques that focus on the planning, development, implementation, and evaluation phases of language and culture teaching.