Intercultural Communicative Competence In College English Teaching: A New Framework

Intercultural communication competence is an area of research that has tremendous pragmatic potential. English education is not only instrumental but also humanistic in nature. Its ultimate goal is intended to cultivate the intercultural communicative competence, which has become a common perception in the circle of English education in China and has gathered a widespread attention. However, the research on this competence itself is currently much of limit, and a relevant effective training model is yet to be constructed. Accordingly, research on this subject is a must.Scholars have not yet reached a universally agreed-upon definition of intercultural communicative competence. Without a clarified and structuralized definition of intercultural communicative competence, it is no sense to discuss its pedagogical implications to College English Teaching. Therefore, the present research is intended to construct a new framework of intercultural communicative competence in College English Teaching and analyze the composing dimensions of this framework. The three dimensions of intercultural communicative competence (Cognitive dimension, Affective dimension, Behavioral dimension) by previous researchers have been identified with an aim to draw attention to move the cultivation of this competence beyond its traditional perspectives. Language and context is an integrated and indivisible whole, especially in intercultural communication. Cultural context, Situational context and Linguistic context constitute different levels of context. Therefore, this research proposes that Contextual dimension be incorporated into intercultural communicative competence as one of the composing dimensions.An empirical research is conducted to test the framework constructed by the present research. Data is collected by using questionnaires. The respondents are 130 non-English majors in HEBUST. The collected data was then analyzed with SPSS17.0. The research results indicated that the intercultural communicative competence of Chinese Non-English major students has remained at a fairly low level. And, of all the four dimensions, the respondents score the lowest in the Behavioral dimension. The correlation of the four composing dimensions of ICC is positive and the correlation between the four dimensions of ICC and the overall ICC is positive. The results mostly supported the proposed composing dimensions of intercultural communicative competence.Based on the new framework this research constructed and combining the other learning theories such as Situated Learning Theory and constructivist theory as well as this research's statistical survey results, a "Cultural Experience" training model is suggested.This research has provided new empirical data to support the research on intercultural communicative competence in College English Teaching. And all the findings of the survey have an illuminative function in developing Non-English major students' intercultural communicative competence. Pedagogical implications have also been presented in respect of developing Non-English major students' intercultural communicative competence.