An Empirical Study Of College English Intercultural Teaching: Problems And Countermeasures

The rapid development of world economic integration, cultural diversity, and theestablishment of English’s status of becoming the world’s universal language hasadvanced new requirements for college English teaching in China toward cultivatinghigh-quality talents with intercultural communicative competence. But our currentcollege English teaching practice is a long-term extension of the traditional system of alinguistic knowledge-centered teaching mode, focusing primarily on the cultivation ofstudents’ language ability. Because this teaching style has generally overlooked or onlygiven lip-service to the importance of culture teaching and learning, it has impeded theeffective cultivation of students’ intercultural communicative competence. As a result,there are many examples of students who have been learning English for many yearsbeing unable to communicate in English, not to mention communicate interculturally.In order to present an authentic picture of China’s college English interculturalteaching, find out the specific problems as well as their causes, this research synthesizesthe research results of intercultural communication, foreign language teaching andapplied cultural linguistics as references to propose strategies and encourage reforms inuniversity English teaching and improve students’ intercultural communicativecompetence. It confirms the tripartite mode of intercultural communication competence(cognitive, affective, and behavioral) as the leading theoretical framework of this study,and applies qualitative and quantitative research methods to carry out an empiricalresearch project. The research expounds the relationships among language, culture, andcommunication of the trinity, explicitly points out that college English teaching shouldbe based on the development of students’ intercultural communication competence asthe goal of intercultural foreign language teaching, and suggests that the cultivation ofintercultural communication ability can be achieved only by intercultural teaching.The research took the ELT in Heilongjiang University of Science and Technologywhere the author has been teaching for many years as a case for study. This studyutilized questionnaires to survey students and then interviewed teaching staff to analyzeproblems and their causes in cognitive, emotional and behavioral aspects inintercultural foreign language teaching.The result of the statistical analysis shows that students’ cultural learning andapplication are not ideal. There is a serious Chinese culture “Aphasia” phenomenon, and students’ intercultural communicative competence is very low. The survey showsthat the main factors influencing students’ English cultural knowledge learning are:students’ definition and understanding of culture, students’ viewpoint of language studyand culture study, English classroom teaching and students’ cultural informationsources, students’ effort distribution in English study, of which students’ attitudetowards language study and culture study has the strongest influence on students’English cultural knowledge study. The main factors influencing the teachers’intercultural teaching are: teachers’ attitude towards intercultural communicativeknowledge learning, teachers’ understanding of intercultural teaching contents, thechoice of intercultural teaching method, the amount of cultural content in textbooks,culture teaching time distribution, students learning interests and attitudes towardculture, of which the choice of intercultural teaching methods influences teachers’intercultural teaching the most.Through the combined analysis of questionnaire and interview survey, the studyfurther finds out that there are serious problems in college English interculturalteaching concerning teaching pedagogy, teaching objectives, teachers’ interculturalcompetence, teachers’ understanding of intercultural teaching and the practice, contentpresentation of teaching material and so on. The students are not clear in their learningobjectives for the main body of their study, their perceptions of culture learning arefuzzy, and their self-learning abilities are not strong. In view of the existing problems,this study analyses the causes of the problems from the two aspects of foreign languageteaching and intercultural communication competence development, to identify theobscurity of teaching philosophy and teaching objectives, the lack of and imbalance incultural content, the insufficient resources in the teaching environment, the influence ofexam-oriented education in Chinese environment, the cultural differences betweenChina and the West, including different thinking modes. Among all of these causes, thevalue differences between China and the West are the roots.The innovation of this study is the construction of ICC cultivation system from thethree domains (cognition, emotion and behavior), which is based mostly on anempirical research on the problems and their causes in FLT and students’ ICCdevelopment. The system clearly suggests that college English intercultural teachingmust deal properly with three relationships, namely the relationship between nativeculture and English culture, the relationship between English linguistic pragmaticcompetence and the humanity in English language learning, the relationship between language teaching and culture teaching. For each, this study provides a series ofeffective strategies, which can help students to foster language and cultural competence,eliminate the influence of the “Chinese cultural aphasia”, build up cultural awareness inorder to cultivate intercultural communicative competence, and solve those problemsmet in intercultural teaching.This study is more systemic and targeted by breaking the past few empiricalintercultural teaching researches characterized by shattered and scattered content andsurvey. The university selected here is a microcosm of many Chinese universities. Itcan be a good representative, to a certain extent, to reflect the status of Chineseuniversities’ intercultural foreign language teaching.The cultivating system of intercultural communicative competence constructed bythis study has a practical significance in that it can be used in the instruction ofintercultural teaching and provide academic references and a basis for the ongoingresearch of intercultural foreign language teaching.