A Study Of College English Teaching Model Based On Intercultural Communication

In the context of globalization, people of different cultural backgrounds must meet the following conditions before they have effective communication with each other. Besides having a good command of foreign languages, they need to understand foreign culture, experience and know the differences between the native culture and the foreign culture, possess enough linguistic competence and intercultural communicative competence.This dissertation will analyze the status quo of China's foreign language education, point out the problems of the students' communication in foreign languages and the defects of foreign language education, investigate the deep and subtle causes that lead to the students' shortage of intercultural communicative competence, examine the evolution of language teaching methodology so as to collect positive experiences and negative lessons of foreign language teaching, draw on the theories of modern language teaching and intercultural communication to rectify the unhealthy tendency in foreign language teaching that language knowledge and skills are emphasized while cultural factors are neglected, and then construct a brand new model of foreign language teaching-College English Teaching Model Based on Intercultural Communication.China has gone through a series of foreign language teaching reforms, but constantly with very disappointing results:the students have very strong linguistic competence and practical skills, but lack social cultural competence and intercultural competence. College English teaching is a typical example. Through deep and intensive research work, we discovered seven main causes of the problem.1. The mainstream approaches and methods of foreign language teaching all neglected the important role of cultures in foreign language teaching and communication.2. The foreign language teaching circle lacks a mature intercultural language teaching model, especially an intercultural college English teaching model.3. Most schools want a college English syllabus that contains necessary items of intercultural communication.4. Teachers and students of English language are deficient in awareness of intercultural communication.5. Teachers are in want of culture teaching training and of chances to get exposed to English and American cultures.6. Textbooks of intercultural communication in English are rare.7. Systematic evaluation methods and standards for cultural competence are lacking at schools.Language teaching that aims to turn out foreign language masters has a history of over100years. Its evolution consists of four main stages.1. Teaching grammar and trying to foster students'reading ability.2. Emphasizing imitation and repetition in the light of children's acquisition of their native language to improve the students'listening and speaking skills.3. With cognition as precondition, trying to develop students'ability to use English in an all-round way or to develop their communicative competence.4. With language and culture as input, trying to cultivate students' social cultural competence and intercultural communicative competence. Up to now there are no less than twenty systemized approaches and methods in language teaching, five of which are most influential. They are Grammar-translation Method, Direct Method, Audio-lingual Approach, Cognitive Approach and Communicative Approach. The first four methods and approaches all aimed to teach language knowledge and to improve language skills, and all made great contributions to language education, but all neglected cultural factors.Research on intercultural communication started in the50's last century. Scholars from all over the world made joint efforts to construct the unique theoretical framework and research method for the study of intercultural communication on the basis anthropology, psychology, linguistics, media studies, sociology, philosophy, culture studies, etc. American anthropologist Edward Hall, who was called "father of intercultural communication studies", had a deep research on the relationship between culture and communication, and his book The Silent Language, published in1959, was considered the foundation works of intercultural communication studies. The book Intercultural Communication Theory:Current Perspectives, published in1983by Gudykunst, was considered the sign of intercultural communication studies as an independent and mature discipline. The fruits of intercultural communication research have the highest value in foreign language education and in relevant fields. With the development of intercultural communication studies, scholars have realized that language teaching can never go without cultural factors, that communication in a foreign language is exactly intercultural communication, and that the important criterion of modern foreign language masters is whether they have cultural cognitive competence and intercultural competence. Culture teaching in language education context has gone through three main stages:developing reading abilities, developing communicative competence, developing intercultural communicative competence; and has produced four teaching models:foreign cultural model, intercultural model, multicultural model and trans-cultural model.Intercultural communication studies have elaborated the relationship among language, culture and communication, the connotation of culture, the principles of communication, the concept of communicative competence, the connotation of intercultural communication, the concept of intercultural communicative competence, the phenomena of cultural differences, etc. In intercultural communication, every participant tries to understand others'speeches according to his own cultural conventions and predictions. In the light of the principles of intercultural communication, the ideal objective of foreign language teaching is to help the students use the foreign language to communicate in the context of the target culture, that is cultivate the students'intercultural communicative competence.To remedy the defects of China's foreign language education, the writer of this dissertation, leading his research team, consulted the theories of language teaching methodology, the achievements of culture research and culture teaching, and the theories of intercultural communication studies, and constructed an intercultural-communication-based college English teaching model for the undergraduate students of Wuhan University that conforms to the reality of China. This teaching model contains ten categories, and its construction follows three steps. The implementation of this teaching model might perform positive exemplary functions, providing references for the college English teaching reform of other institutions of higher education and for the teaching of other foreign languages.