A Study On Intercultural Communication Competence Of Level 3 Non-English Major Sophomores And English Major Sophomores

With the development of communication and transportation, the globalization of world economy, the widespread population migrations that lead to multicultural workforce and society, intercultural communication competence becomes a required ability for citizens in the 21st century to survive and live meaningfully and productively. Over the last two decades, the discussion carried on in FLT (Foreign Language Teaching) has been concentrated on the dichotomy between grammatical competence vs.communicative competence. However, as the communicative approach in FLT is increasingly gaining popularity, researchers and scholars begin to concern themselves with foreign learners'ICC rather than the two mentioned above. For a long time in China, however, the grammar-oriented perspective has led to the emphasis on the learners'grammatical competence, which results in the inefficiency of FLT in China. Even though it is now commonly accepted that language teaching should focus not only on the forms of language, but also on its social rules and pragmatic rules, the fact is, however, in the process of FLT, that little emphasis has been placed on the development of learners'intercultural awareness and ICC. As a result, students frequently remain deficient in the ability of actually using English and understanding its appropriate use in normal intercultural communication. Since the goal of FLT is to enable learners to communicate appropriately and effectively in the target language, improving and cultivating learners'ICC becomes essential.Enlightened by the above-mentioned belief that the ultimate goal of FLT is to develop the learners'ICC, the study aims to investigate the differences between two groups of college students in Huazhong University of Science and Technology in terms of the intercultural communication competence. Based on quantitative study, the present thesis attempts to answer the following questions:⑴What is the general situation of L3 sophomores as well as English major sophomores in terms of their ICC?⑵What are the biggest and smallest differences between the two groups in terms of their ICC?⑶What are the possible steps to improve the student's ICC in foreign language teaching and learning?By means of analyzing data we gained, we find that the general situation of college students in terms of ICC is not desirable, and the results of Big"C"part from L3 students are much better than English majors in the same Grade. Therefore, we make a conclusion that the biggest and smallest differences between L3 students and English majors lie in Big"C"and Non-verbal aspects respectively.Last but not least, author puts forward some tentative suggestions to teachers and students in order to further cultivate and improve the college students'ICC.