A QMC-based Study Of The Intercultural Competence Of Cadets

Foreign language learning consists of several key components. It includes grammatical competence, communicative competence, language proficiency as well as cultural competence. For the last few decades, Chinese students and teachers have emphasized too much on the linguistic competence and ignored the intercultural input. This phenomenon is especially remarkable in some of the Chinese maritime colleges. However, the working environment has changed dramatically compared with that of 20 years ago. The multinational crew situation has emerged due to the expanding international shipping industry and this tendency is increasing at a fast speed. This change implied a higher requirement on seafarers' intercultural communication ability as well as the linguistic competence.In order to identify the maritime university students' intercultural communication competence, the researcher conducted a sociocultural test and an interview to 39 junior students. The sociocultural test includes three sections. The author analyzed the data collected from the test. Through comparison of the scores of the linguistic test and that of the sociocultural test, the author found that the students' intercultural competence is lower than their linguistic ability and there is no correlation between the two types of tests. It also shows that the students as a whole are lack of intercultural input in MET colleges. At the same time, the results of the interview reveals the students' attitude towards intercultural input in English learning, the factors hindering the absorbing of intercultural knowledge and the cultural aspects they are interested in.This research intends to remind the English teachers and students in Chinese MET colleges that linguistic competence is just one aspect of English language teaching and learning in maritime context. More priority should be placed on the intercultural input.