A Study On Adult English Learners’ Intercultural Communicative Competence

With the fast development of economic globalization, international communication is more frequent than ever before. There is a growing need for people with intercultural communicative competence. Many adult English learners are doing jobs which are directly or indirectly connected with intercultural communication. As a special group, adult learners have their own characteristics. Their main purpose of learning English is to be able to communicate with foreigners successfully. Apart from mastering the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary about English language, the ability of intercultural communication is of great importance. To cultivate and improve adult English learners’intercultural communicative competence, it is very necessary to understand their current situation of intercultural communicative competence, to explore the affecting factors of intercultural communicative competence and then to put forward the countermeasures.There are three research questions to be answered in this study:1) What is the current situation of adult English learners’intercultural communicative competence?2) What are the factors affecting the current situation of adult English learners’intercultural communicative competence?3) How do adult English learners improve their intercultural communicative competence?In the investigation, quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed.64learners from Dalian New Dynamic Institute were invited to be the subjects of the test and the questionnaire. And8of them attended an interview. Firstly, a test was conducted with the purpose of finding out the level of adult learners’cultural knowledge and a questionnaire was addressed to investigate learners’intercultural sensitivity; and then an interview was conducted. The results revealed that adult English learners are lacking in intercultural knowledge; the intercultural sensitivity of adult learners is weak; adult learners’intercultural communicative competence is low. To be specific, the main reasons that influenced adult learners’intercultural communicative competence include:1) Teachers neglected culture teaching in the class.2) Students did not realize the importance of culture learning. They lack of interaction engagement, interaction confidence and interaction enjoyment.3) Adult learners’intercultural communicative competence is affected by negative transfer of their mother tongue.Based on the results, the researcher further put forward some countermeasures, such as increasing students’intercultural knowledge by extensive reading; improving students’ intercultural sensitivity by TV and internet and other practical approaches. Finally some limitations and suggestions for further study are pointed out.