A Study Of English For Fashion In Higher Vocational College From The Perspective Of Intercultural Communicative Competence Theory

Nowadays, the culture teaching has played an increasingly important role in language instruction. In English teaching at higher vocational colleges, the teachers should not only provide the students with the basical English language knowledge, but also help them to enhance their inter-cultural communicative competence. Naturally, it is quite meaningful and necessary to have a study on the students’ intercultural communicative competence(ICC) at higher vocational colleges.This study aims to analysis and evaluate the textbook English for Fashion(Higher Education Press 2004 Edition) based on the ICC theory put forward by Chen & Starosta(1996). Specifically this study is aimed to answer the following research questions:1. What inter-cultural knowledge does English for Fashion possess?2. Is the textbook English for Fashion helpful in improving students’ ICC in higher vocational college?3. In terms of inter-cultural communication, what are the weaknesses of the textbook English for Fashion?This study adopts the method of text analysis. It carries out internal evaluation through analysis the inter-cultural knowledge of English for Fashion. The author has conducted the questionnaire survey for 150 sophomore students in the department of Fashion Design in Hunan Arts and Crafts Vocational College, and interviewed four teachers who engaged in Fashion English teaching. The results show that:1. The textbook English for Fashion covers inter-cultural knowledge of celebrity,historical knowledge, religion, apparel culture, brand and other aspects, and conforms to The Basic Requirements on English Course in Vocational Education(2000).2. To some extent, it helps to cultivate students’ intercultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity and intercultural adroitness. Among them, improving the students’ intercultural sensitivity is the most obvious aspect, and improving the students’ intercultural adroitness is ranked in the second one, and improving the students’ intercultural awareness is not obvious. The conclusion of this paper is based on descriptive statistics, whether it has statistical significance, remains to be further exploration in the future.3. There are also some weaknesses in the textbook English for Fashion:(1) The inter-cultural knowledge is relatively absent;(2) A lot of inter-cultural knowledge is implicit;(3) The textbook attaches importance to the introduction of culture of the target language, pays little attention to two-way communication perspective;(4) Thepresentation of inter-cultural contents in the textbook lack a clear cultural thread;(5)There are no passages related to the student’s autonomy, and there is no invitation for the learner to critical analysis of the inter-cultural content of those passages. On the basis of these findings, some suggestions of the improvements in the inter-cultural knowledge of the textbook English for Fashion are discussed. It is hoped that the study will provide textbook editors and users with useful suggestions and reference.