A Study On Intercultural Sensitivity Of Chinese Learners In The Post-epidemic Era

As an important factor in intercultural communication,intercultural sensitivity plays a very important role in people’s communication.Since the outbreak of COVID-19,Chinese education around the world has been greatly impacted and affected.In the post-epidemic era,many Chinese learners can only learn online.The focus of this paper is how to achieve intercultural sensitivity in online learning.In this paper,quantitative and qualitative research methods are combined.By distributing Chen&Starosta Intercultural Sensitivity Scale(ISS)and conducting semistructured interviews,intercultural sensitivity of online Chinese learners and its influencing factors are explored.78 Chinese learners who have participated in online Chinese learning in domestic universities participated in the questionnaire survey,and5 learners participated in the interview.The results are as follows:(1)The overall intercultural sensitivity of these learners has reached a moderate to high level.The five elements of intercultural sensitivity,from highest to lowest,are: respect for cultural differences,interaction enjoyment,interaction engagement,interaction attentiveness,and interaction confidence;(2)Learners from other parts of Asia(Central Asia,South Asia,West Asia)are lower than learners from other parts of the world in the respect for cultural differences,and learners from East Asia are lower than learners from other parts of the world in the interaction confidence;(3)The total number of hours of Chinese language learning did not have a significant effect on learners’ intercultural sensitivity,while the number of hours of online learning affected learners’ interaction engagement;(4)Chinese language proficiency did not have a significant effect on learners’ intercultural sensitivity;(5)The learning environment,learning conditions,teacher’s personalities,teaching style,classmates’ personalities,and participation level were also important factors affecting learners’ intercultural sensitivity in the online teaching mode.This study puts forward some suggestions for Chinese teaching under the new situation.Firstly,teachers should encourage teaching to enhance students’ communicative confidence.Secondly,teachers should develop training programs according to the characteristics of students in different regions and teach students according to their aptitude.In addition,teachers should timely adjust the teaching style to improve students’ sense of participation in online class.