Researches On English Majors’ Intercultural Sensitivity And Cultural Identity Anxiety

Influenced by the increasingly quick pace of globalization,the concept of Intercultural Communication Competence in the field of Intercultural Communication has been given wide attention.Intercultural Sensitivity,one of the three dimensions of Intercultural Communication Competence,defined as the ability to appreciate cultural differences and develop a positive emotion that promotes appropriate and effective behaviors in intercultural communication(Chen & Strosta,2000),has also aroused extensive researches in academic field.In the meantime,the process of globalization has given rise to an emergence of the problem concerning Cultural Identity in Intercultural Communication: a growing number of foreign language learners have felt doubted and fuzzy about their cultural identities.English major is a group with distinctive feature who has been exposed to western cultures for a long time,so their interculturalness is particularly representative.Thus,this study takes English majors as research objects,examines their current status of intercultural sensitivity and cultural identity anxiety,and explores the correlation between them,aiming at seeking approach for decreasing their cultural identity anxiety.To be specific,this study is conducted to answer the following three questions.(1)What is the current status of English majors’ intercultural sensitivity?(2)What is the current status of English majors’ cultural identity anxiety?(3)What is the correlation between English majors’ intercultural sensitivity and cultural identity anxiety?In this study,Intercultural Sensitivity Scale by Chen & Starosta and a Cultural Identity Anxiety questionnaire by Han are employed to investigate 162 junior English majors in the university the author has been studying.EXCEL and SPSS 17.0 are utilized for data processing and analysis.The research results are as follows.(1)English majors enjoy a decent level of ICS.In the inspection of the condition of sub-factors,it is found Interaction Engagement gets the highest score,following by Interaction Attentiveness,Respect for Cultural Differences,Interaction Enjoyment,and Interaction Confidence ranks at the bottom among five factors.(2)English majors suffer from CIA at an intermediatelevel.Idolatry to western cultures exists among many English majors,while Chinese cultures seem to be disappointing to them to some extent.If sorted by the degree of anxiety from high to low,the sub-factors of CIA respectively are,Social Norms,Values,Cultural Behaviors and Language.(3)A relatively significant and negative correlation is confirmed to lie between ICS and CIA.Among the five sub-factors of ICS,Respect for Cultural Differences bears the strongest correlation with CIA.Moreover,Interaction Confidence,Interaction Enjoyment,and Interaction Engagement are verified to be correlated with CIA as well.Based on Cultural Identity Theory by Collier & Thomas and Identity Negotiation Theory by Ting-Toomey,this study,initially combining the concepts of ICS,cultural identity in Intercultural Communication and the concept of anxiety in Psychology,tries to probe into English majors’ ICS and CIA.The research results serve to seek the way of solving English majors’ CIA,provide the latest data for relevant field in Intercultural Communication,and bring some implications for foreign language education in China.