Cultivating Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) In College English Vocabulary Teaching

English as an international language is the most commonly used communication tool in the world. Many non-English speaking countries take English as their second language to communicate broadly and deeply with other countries. China is of course no exception. The purpose of learning a language is to communicate, and communication is also culture. So language, culture and communication constitute the system of human activities. Vocabulary is the most basic component of language. It plays an irreplaceable role in communication. Therefore, college English teaching should be based on the vocabulary teaching, put the vocabulary teaching in the environment of cross-cultural communication and find the differences between Chinese and western culture. It also needs to focus on the cultivation of intercultural communicative competence.However, there are a few researches which are related to foster the cross-cultural communicative ability in vocabulary teaching. Most people pay their attention to cultivate the cross-cultural awareness, but they ignore the importance of ability. Students in college will soon enter into the society, which is the epitome of interpersonal communication. Thus they need more English linguistic competence. That’s why we urgently need new methods to cultivate intercultural communicative competence. Many words are rich in cultural connotation and intercultural knowledge. These culture-loaded words need teachers to find and sort out, and then teach the students through the effective vocabulary teaching methods. This study takes the related theories of vocabulary teaching and constructivism as a foundation, to explore the methods and strategies of cultivating intercultural communicative competence in college students’ vocabulary teaching. It is designed to increase student’s interest in learning vocabulary and to cultivate the ability of intercultural communication.In this experiment, the subjects are the Liaoning Normal University’s non-English major sophomore students. In order to improve the students’ cross-cultural awareness and develop their ability of intercultural communication, the author used a variety of vocabulary teaching methods to input cultural knowledge into vocabulary. For example, direct culture input, it explains or inputs the cultural connotation of the words. The method of comparison compares the similarities and differences between the target language and native language of cultural vocabulary. Practice in communication is to use learned words to dialogue and communicate in the context. Etymological method, this method is to understand the origins of some words, through the background of vocabulary learning which can make students better grasp the vocabulary. Vocabulary associative method, through the learning of vocabulary, students establish the system of relationship in the brain, they can put the words together. Memory intensification, this method emphasizes repeated practice and exam to strengthen students’ memory. And interest learning outside the classroom, it aims to enrich the students’ second class through extracurricular activities and the collocation of a variety of learning mode. The experiment is divided into three parts: pre-test, post-test and questionnaire. The experimental data would be analyzed by the software SPSS. Finally, it concluded that it could enhance the ability of intercultural communication in vocabulary teaching by using appropriate teaching methods and strategies. The scores of experimental class were significantly higher than the control class. And experimental class’ interest of learning vocabulary and the ability of cross-cultural communication improved obviously.