Cultivating Intercultural Communicative Competence For Non-English Majors

With the rapid development of communication technology and economic globalization, intercultural communication is greatly increasing. College students of non-English majors have far more chances and channels to communicate with people from English-speaking countries. However, it is observed that although students have received formal English education for several years, most of them remain deficient in the intercultural communicative competence due to the lack of cultural knowledge of the target language, which is a problem attracting English experts'and teachers'attention.Language and culture are closely related to each other. Language is a part of culture and is influenced by culture; it is also the carrier of culture and it reflects cultural features of a community in which the language is spoken. From the angle of language teaching and learning, to teach a language is to teach another culture; to learn a language is also to learn another culture. Therefore, language teaching and culture teaching are inseparable. The essential purpose of language teaching is not only to teach linguistic knowledge but also to teach how to use the language appropriately in the intercultural communication. Therefore, students should be encouraged not only to have a good command of the linguistic knowledge and skills, but also to develop the intercultural communicative competence.In the teaching practice, more and more English teachers have come to realize the critical role of culture teaching in cultivating students'intercultural communicative competence. And many language educators have introduced from foreign countries various culture teaching theories and pedagogies into China and set up their own culture teaching models feasible in Chinese contexts. Based on the author's own teaching experience, this thesis will also explore the problem of how to integrate culture teaching with language teaching.With the theoretical researches of language, culture, communication, intercultural communication and their relationship as its theoretical basis, this thesis reviews culture teaching researches at home and abroad and reveals the present situation of college English teaching as well as its existing problems in culture teaching. The causes of non-English majors'weakness in intercultural communication will be explored. Then it elaborates on the goals, contents, principles, strategies and techniques of culture teaching. It offers some practical methods to improve students'intercultural communicative competence at curricular and extracurricular time. Finally, the author hopes college English teachers can give more attention to culture teaching and work together to find effective approaches to develop students'intercultural communicative competence. The thesis also points out some aspects which need further exploring and developing in the future as well as the limitation of this thesis.