Using Film As A Means To Develop Intercultural Competence For China's EFL Students

This thesis calls attention to the feasibility and advantages of using films as a way to teach intercultural communication to advanced English majors in China and to develop their intercultural communication competence. Culture teaching in China's EFL classrooms has become important since the 1980s and it is now understood by many that culture should not be taught only as background information for language teaching. Instead, teaching culture along with language develops students'intercultural communication competence. As a rich resource, film has been used for this purpose but most often not in a systematic way. This thesis highlights the advantages of using films and offers a curricular proposal for this purpose. Theoretically, it emphasizes developing learners'intercultural communication competence as the goal of foreign language (especially English) education; and practically, it provides a curricular proposal with practical suggestions for English teachers to use film as a means to enhance culture learning and intercultural communication competence development.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter briefly states the background and significance of the study. The second chapter gives an overview of culture teaching in foreign language education, China's EFL classroom in particular, with stress on developing intercultural communication competence as the goal. Chapter three states the theoretical foundation for using film as a culture teaching tool. In chapter four, the author puts forward pedagogical suggestions for how to use films as a course to help students develop their intercultural awareness and competence with a concrete sample lesson plan. The last chapter concludes that the use of films should be fully utilized and more efforts need to be made to develop and enhance culture teaching and learning through films.