The Levels Of Intercultural Communicative Competence Training Reflected In Chinese Language-and-culture Textbooks For Non-native Chinese Speakers

The paper presents a study on the levels of the training of interculturalcommunicative competence of the current language-and-culture textbooks fornon-native Chinese speakers. It adopts the intercultural communicative approach tothe teaching of Chinese as a second language, and thus clearly demonstrates theessentiality of the fully presentation of one cultural phenomenon and the overalldesign of textbooks in general.The paper argues that the ultimate goal of the second language-and-cultureeducation is not only to increase understanding of a culture but is also meant totraining intercultural competence, which including four levels of knowing what,knowing how, knowing why and knowing oneself. And it is not so much nativespeaker competence but rather intercultural competence that should be aimed at.Further, this paper, based on some latest studies of second language teaching,proposes four dimensions of the levels of the aforementioned training as the basicprinciples of the Chinese language-and-culture teaching, and also as a checklist toevaluate the current textbooks. The four dimensions of the levels, which arepresenting the culture-specific, presenting the culture-general, presenting thetraditional culture, presenting the current culture, are examined in this paper. Thetextbooks are assessed and analyzed in five perspectives: the coverage rate of the fourlevels, the arrangement of the cultural perspectives, the balance betweenculture-specific and culture-general, the proportion of traditional culture andcurrent culture, the design of the exercises aimed at self-awareness.Concerning the teaching of Chinese language-and-culture for non-native Chinesespeakers, this paper suggests that the overall teaching program could be processed inentirety on one general principle: the dialogic concerning.