Exploring The Effect Of Culture Learning On Intercultural Sensitivity

The purpose of this exploratory study was to evaluate the effectiveness of culture learning for promoting the level of intercultural sensitivity (ICS) of freshman students. ICS was defined as "an individual's ability to develop a positive emotion towards understanding and appreciating cultural differences that promotes appropriate and effective behavior in intercultural communication" (Chen & Starosta, 1998, p. 5).The Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) was used to quantify participants' levels of ICS based on Chen and Starosta's conceptualization of ICS in his model of Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC). The study adopted the pretest-posttest with control group design, with subjects all coming from the International School of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS). The test group received the treatment of an 14-week-long course on British Culture taught by a native speaker during the fall semester of 2005. The data from the quantitative analysis were then compared, employing the independent sample T-test. Moreover, a questionnaire designed by the author was administered to participants to solicit responses to the British Culture course.The results indicated that culture learning may have helped to improve students' level of ICS. Although students in the test group did not show a significant improvement in their overall intercultural sensitivity levels after the intercultural exposure, they did make progress in two of the five constructs that consist of intercultural sensitivity: Interaction Engagement and Respect for Cultural Difference. In addition, the positive feedback to the open-ended questions revealed that culture learning makes a positive impact on improving intercultural sensitivity.However, an 18-week course may not be long enough to improve participants' levels of intercultural sensitivity. Besides this, the most plausible explanation forthe failure to perceive an improvement is that stress on the Big C culture content and text achievement may hinder the development of intercultural sensitivity. In addition, the difference in the perception of the learning setting and the difference in cultures of learning between western teacher and Chinese students may also affect their development of intercultural sensitivity. The teacher and the students were found to possess different teaching/learning styles, and different views on the roles of the teacher and the textbook.The current study also proposed several culture teaching methods to enhance intercultural sensitivity and meet the needs of university students.