Employing Acculturation Strategies To Enhance College Students' Communicative Competence: An Action Research Project

This thesis is concerned with incorporation of acculturation strategies into English learning to enhance communicative competence of non-English majors by means of action research. It is generally acknowledged that the primary goal of foreign language learning is to develop the ability to utilize real and appropriate language to communicate and interact with others. It indicates that learning a foreign language is not tantamount to having a command of syntactic structures, new words and expressions, but mainly to develop communicative competence. As Hymes proposes, communicative competence consists of four components - systematic potential, appropriacy, occurrence, and feasibility. This notion inspires us to comprehend that foreign language acquisition involves not only linguistic knowledge, but also the knowledge and ability to utilize the linguistic knowledge in ways that are socially appropriate and culturally feasible.However, based on the findings of a pilot research through a semi-structured interview and sociocultural test implemented among eighty two sophomores majoring in economy and management in SWU (Southwest University) in China in September,2009, it is perceived that their sociocultural competence is not as good as their linguistic competence. It indicates that they neglect the significance of the cultivation of sociocultural competence, which overwhelmingly hinders the development of their communicative competence and results in pragmatic failure in intercultural communication.Under such circumstances, an action research project is implemented to employ acculturation strategies to enhance college students'communicative competence. The action research project characterized by investigating teachers'own professional context and aiming to bring about change in the present study was carried out through two cycles, in which acculturation strategies were initiated in three layers, i.e. cultivating acculturation awareness as the starting point, acquiring acculturation knowledge as the bridge and developing critical acculturation thinking as the ultimate goal, which were conducted through various tasks and activities.In order to appraise the effectiveness of the action research project, a post research is designed and implemented. Data elicitation is mainly based on a post linguistic test and a post sociocultural test. After analyzing the data by SPSS 13.0, it is found that the students' acculturation awareness has been raised; they accumulate considerable acculturation knowledge and gradually formulate impartial and dialectical critical acculturation thinking. Their linguistic competence is greatly improved as well. They have become more autonomous and have had the capability to hold the responsibility to determine their own learning objectives, and the ability to monitor the procedure of their language learning and to evaluate what has been acquired. Simultaneously, the action research project promoted the author's professionalism and equipped the author with the capability of how to develop a reflective approach to his own teaching.Hence, it can be designated that the action research project on employing the acculturation strategies to enhance college students'communicative competence is very effective and satisfactory and acculturation strategies have become an essential prerequisite to enhance the college students'communicative competence.