An Experimental Study On Intercultural Sensitivity Of Chinese College Non-English Majors

The intercultural sensitivity is an important component in intercultural competence. The relationship between intercultural sensitivity and intercultural competence is a positive correlation. Therefore, it is of great necessity to increase people's intercultural sensitivity in order to cultivate their intercultural competence.Although many foreign researchers have covered this field and many training models as well as training methods were constructed and designed by them with the aim of increasing levels of intercultural sensitivity, it is still necessary to find out the effective training models and methods which will be quite suitable and effective in training Chinese students.Therefore, the present study aims at finding out the current level of intercultural sensitivity of the Chinese non-English majors, and whether there is any significant difference in intercultural sensitivity between the would-be-abroad students and the would-be-home ones. It also aims at testing the effectiveness and applicability of the current training model employed in the training as well as finding out the suitable intercultural sensitivity training methods greatly appreciated by the Chinese college students.The research employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. The 82 non-English majors from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) were divided into two groups, i.e., the control group (with 41 subjects) and the experimental group (with 41 students). Among the 82 subjects, 40 would like to be abroad for further study in the future while the other 40 would like to stay at home. The pretest was administered before training in order to probe whether there was significant difference between the would-be-abroad subjects and the would-be-home ones or not. A six-week training program designed by the current author was administered only to the experimental group. Six weeks later, the posttest was administered to both the control group and the experimental group in order to investigate the improvement in intercultural sensitivity. Besides, the interview was carried out among all the subjects in order to investigate the differences between the would-be-abroad group and the would-be-home group in daily activities concerning English as well as the personal traits concerning intercultural sensitivity. Data obtained from the questionnaire were processed in SPSS 11.5 The opinions collected from the interview were documented and summarized.Results of the survey indicated that the students with the intention of going abroad outperformed the students without this intention in intercultural sensitivity. This was because the motivation of going abroad, language proficiency, as well as the personal traits had played an important role in intercultural sensitivity. Moreover, the training model as well as the methods were proven to be quite effective and suitable in intercultural sensitivity training in China. The whole model was accepted by the subjects and the methods most appreciated by them were: art and culture, films, as well as simulation games.