A Research On ESL Teachers' Intercultural Communication Competence

Both the intercultural experts and renowned scholars in Foreign Language Teaching and Research home and abroad have reached an agreement that Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) is the absolute necessity for talents in the 21st century, as they met in 2006 International Seminar of Intercultural Communication. Meanwhile, the development of ICC competence has already become a new teaching concept, which will penetrate in all aspects of language teaching activities in China. Indeed, to facilitate language learners to develop ICC, language teachers, especially those teaching English as Second Language, should first be competent intercultural communicators with great confidence and sufficient experience. But the fact is that until now the research on ESL teachers'ICC competence is at the scratching level, and a clear picture of ESL teachers'ICC has been far from conceived. This makes this research quite valuable and innovative.The theoretical foundation of this study is Spitzberg's ICC Model, consisting of Individual System, Episodic System, and Relatioal System. The three systems are indispensable parts of this model, and they can be used to evaluate a person'competence in intercultural settings. Based on this theory, the study is undertaken to discover real picture of the ESL teachers'ICC competence by measuring their individual system, episodic system, and relational system. The subjects come from 61 universities and colleges covering the main areas in China, which upgrades the reliability of the test results. In this study, the principal hypothesis is that most ESL teachers under the test are strong in their individual system in that they are highly proficient in English, and they have a good deposit of cultural and linguistic knowledge in target language. In this case, they are mostly likely to achieve communication effectiveness in intercultural communication. Nevertheless, they don't have well-built episodic system and relational system. This is largely due to the facts that they haven't experienced varying intercultural contexts, and the interpersonal relations with foreigners are inclined to be simple. All these factors contribute to ESL teachers'incompetence in accomplishing different tasks intercultural communication, as well as in intercultural education. Therefore, ESL teachers should improve their ICC through real intercultural practices.The above hypothesis has been tested by the research results. And the main part of the hypothesis is fairly sound. However, the new finding that over half of the ESL teachers don't feel confident in accomplishing different tasks in intercultural communication has in part changed this hypothesis in the sub-construct, namely motivation. This will greatly affect the ESL teachers'motivation to contact with foreigners and their performance in communication so that the individual system becomes less strong in manifestation. Besides, the study also tested statistical significance between ICC and overseas experience, and the significance between ICC and frequency of contact with foreigners through ANOVA. These statistical results reveal several deficient aspects in ESL teachers'ICC which are waiting to be improved.By referring to the main ICC models and Fanitini'ICC development model, and reflecting the findings of ESL teachers'ICC, the study has proposed a developmental model for language learners in China, and this is partly because ESL teachers are experienced language learners. This new model can be used as a guideline for all language learners'ICC development, especially ESL teachers, which will lead them into new realm of professional development and it will further better the English class. Moreover, under this framework, some solid suggestions on ESL teachers'ICC development are also presented hoping that the discussion and suggestions on ESL teachers'ICC development could attract attention of educators and leaders in education management, who could soon take this issue into serious consideration and put it in the college language education reform plan.