A Survey Of Impact Of Intercultural Sensitivity On Dalian University Of Technology Non-English Majors' Intercultural Communication Competence

With intercultural communication growing increasingly all over the world, interpersonal communication has become more and more global. Intercultural communication has become a communicative act that people can not avoid. Within such a social context, the ability of understanding and accepting cultural differences and communicating effectively and appropriately with people of diverse cultural backgrounds seems very important. In the field of foreign language education in China, intercultural communication competence (ICC) has already regarded as the ultimate goal in foreign language teaching. As an important component of ICC, intercultural sensitivity (ICS) plays a critical role in successful intercultural communication. Therefore, it is of great necessity to investigate ICC and ICS.The questionnaire survey was conducted among 100 second-year non-English majors in Dalian University of Technology to investigate their current status of ICC and ICS. SPSS 16.0 was employed to fulfill the statistic work. The research results showed that both ICC and ICS are medium level. By conducting correlation analysis, the correlation relationship is found between ICC and ICS, which indicates that ICC can be improved by raising level of ICS. Among five factors of intercultural sensitivity scale, the score of respect for cultural differences is the highest, and follows are interaction engagement, interaction enjoyment, interaction attentiveness, and interaction confidence. The multiple regress analysis results show that interaction engagement is the best predictor of ICS. It indicates that the enhancement of interaction engagement is more effective to improve ICC by way of increasing ICS. According to survey results, some suggestions for cultivation of ICC and ICS were proposed at last.The survey is significant both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, it examined ICC and ICS from a new angle which enriched the relevant theory in China. Practically, it provided new data to empirical intercultural studies. Besides, it also gave some feasible suggestions on foreign language teaching. It is hoped that the findings can have illuminative function in developing ICC in college foreign language teaching, and generate further researches in China.