Acquisition Of Behavior Culture During Study Tour

Nowadays the world is experiencing a rapid development in the communication technology and an increasing exchange between different cultures and countries. As the urgent need of talents who are qualified in their specialty and skillful in intercultural communication. American Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century reflects the latest trends of second language learning, beyond the language itself, understand, recognize the cultural diversity, and use the language appropriately in cultural context which makes AP Chinese Language and Culture the best example. Since the 80s of last century, the language teaching profession in our country gradually broke the barriers in teaching culture teaching and reached a consensus on culture teaching in language. Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has been the cultivation of universal attention at home and abroad and has risen to the ultimate goal.Shanghai Center, as one of American university's institution abraod, has established Chinese training program of recruiting sophomore and junior students of this university to study Chinese in Shanghai for one semester. "American university's independent institution overseas", "Chinese language teachers", "American students", "sites in East China Normal University". These characteristics stimulated the author of strong interest. How did the center carry out Chinese culture teaching and promote culture experience activities have gradually entered into the field of study. In 1993 Dr.Milton.J.Bennett created DIMS by drawing on concepts of cognitive psychology and constructivism to divide the awareness of cultural differences into six stages. He wants to improve intercultural communicative competence through the adoption of intercultural sensitivity at every stage and takes this as a framework to explain people's responses to culture differences. Through the application of DMIS in Chinese culture teaching and culture experience activities, from the fundamental concern about the intercultural communication during the learning process will bring a new perspective of culture teaching.When served as students' life assistant in Shanghai Center during Feb.2008 to Sep.2008, the author carried on research by asking foreign students to fill in the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale by Chen & Starosta (1997), judge which stage of intercultural communication do they stay according to DMIS, choose their reasons for studying Chinese in Shanghai in the beginning of the 2008 spring semester as well as attend the second intercultural sensitivity test, take part in the evaluation of the culture experience activities and Chinese language teaching aids. The author used SPSS17.0 and Excel2007 to analyze the rich statistics collected from those investigations, and did many observations and interviews. Later the author gave description to the reasons why students in Shanghai Center chose to study Chinese, how the five aspects of intercultural sensitivity test connected with each other, which stage of DMIS do those students think they were being, how did the culture experience activities and Chinese language teaching aids work, those students'opinions on the frequency as well as the connection between needs of study Chinese and choises of culture experience activities and Chinese language teaching aids.Through the studies mentioned above the author found that there were some shortages in Chinese culture teaching and cultural experience activities that Shanghai Center should pay emphasis on as follows: (1) Judging by the single standard based on the score which foreign students got from the Chinese language test to divide students into different classes has covered up the stratification caused by students held different intercultural sensitivity and stayed in different levels of intercultural communication stages in the same class, which would finally decline the effectiveness of Chinese culture teaching; (2) There were still no clear Chinese culture teaching goals in the classes of different levels and the conventional teaching models of "blackboard and chalk","ask and answer between teacher and students" occupied the dominant position. Neither the computer assisted intraction(CAI) was used to enhance the teaching level, nor new teaching models freshing in domestic and abroad were used to combine the teaching objectives and content into organic integration; (3) Without stratification culture experience activities ignored of the cognitive structures of foreign students in different stages of intercultural communication, as well as the difference between pragmatic competence, which would result in a dazzling that foreign students did not know how to select the cultural experience activities which suit their own development. And frequent participation in cultural activities made students feel burnout in communication, which was absolutely a departure from the original of the culture experience activities. While the center spent lots of human resources and money to carry out activities of the cultural experience, did these really meet the different needs of studying Chinese? This has been put on with a question mark.Referred to the culture teaching suggested by foreign and domestic articles of teaching Chinese, based on the research in Shanghai Center, applied with DMIS, the author give suggestions on how to improve Shanghai Center's Chinese Program during study tour as follows: (1) Introduce relevant scales, such as IDI, propose scientific trial of intercultural development stages of the foreign students, and carry on conventional intercultural communicative competence assessment; (2) Stratified teaching based on diversity should take intercultural sensitivity and intercultural communicative competence of foreign students as important factors; (3) Chinese culture teaching and culture experience activities should hold a clear goal and aim to details, take care of different needs for foreign students to study Chinese as well as the facts of their own. It is recommended that primary class, intermediate class and advanced class focus on various stratification in teaching Chinese culture, be flexible in using of emerging teaching modes, make good use of the site in East China Normal University by breaking the closed Chinese class, get a rich experience of Chinese customs and communicate with Chinese students in real enviroment to improve intercultural communicative competence; (4) Applied with DMIS, promote the strategies to guide culture experience activities in different stages, as well as provide a list of those activities ranging a total of nine different levels of groups as elementary, intermediate and advanced class students in primary, middle and senior stages of intercultural communication, in order to meet different needs of study Chinese and facilitate their access to a higher stage of intercultural communication as soon as possible.Towards the end of the study, the vitality of Shanghai Center's Chinese program results from Americans' expectations of immersion provided by intensive language learning. As the Chinese culture teaching and culture experience activities still focusing on behavioral culture which has its unique feature in short-term language training but a misguide for a long-term goal to achieve cultural recognition, intercultural integration as well as reach the advanced stage of intercultural communication stage. It is a misunderstanding in the design of Chinese culture teaching and culture experience activities which the later designer should pay attention to.