| The main purpose of this study is to assess Chinese English majors'intercultural awareness (IA). A literature review shows that researches on IA, though having gained an increasing recognition in language education both abroad and home, failed to be assessed with a feasible and efficient instrument. Suggested reasons are discussed and provided as follow: (1) an apparent lack of comprehensive consensus on the notion of IA in the pedagogical context; (2) the inefficiency of traditional assessment methods to evaluate IA for its notorious abstraction and complexity in nature. For these reasons, this study sets out to introduce a novel assessment tool of portfolio as to capture and access IA among students. The study attempts to examine the resources available and accessible to students in their IA development, as well as to analyze their IA status. Initially, three approaches of cognitive, affective and behavioral towards IA are summarized briefly. Next a portfolio project named Intercultural Awareness Portfolio Workshop (IAPW) is carefully designed and distributed to 55 student subjects as a 4-week assignment. Based on the total collection of 272 portfolio entries, the researcher conducts both source and content theme analyses. The statistic and thematic findings show that 4 types of sources are presented, 4 mental templates pictured, 4 affective factors identified and 3 major behavioral manifestations uncovered. The research will provide criteria for the assessment or self-assessment of IA in both foreign language learning and intercultural training sessions.
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