An Investigation And Study On Non-English Major Students' Intercultural Sensitivity

With rapid development of the course of Intercultural Communication Competence, increased attention is paid to Intercultural Sensitivity in the multicultural and globalizing society. The journey to a successful intercultural interaction starts from sensitivity towards the differences among world cultures. Therefore Intercultural Sensitivity has been regarded as a first step toward intercultural communication competence.This thesis focuses mainly on the evaluation of Intercultural Sensitivity (the effective aspect of Intercultural Communication Competence) so as to report objectively and statistically the students'current intercultural sensitivity and also evaluate students'performance in Intercultural Communication Competence from the following five aspects:intercultural engagement, respect for cultural differences, interaction confidence, interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness. The study employs a quantitative approach which adopted Intercultural Sensitivity Scale, a valid questionnaire developed by Chen & Starosta. Through the investigation, students'intercultural sensitivity level is presented and the result is analyzed.At the beginning, the history and previous studies on Intercultural Communication Competence and Intercultural Sensitivity have been elaborated; then the non-English major students'Intercultural Sensitivity has been assessed; from these tables and the quantitative results of the study, the author finds that, firstly, the general situation of the Intercultural Sensitivity of the college English students is that their sensitivity in intercultural communication is over uncertain stage because the average mean is 3.154, which means that students should make great efforts to be appropriate and effective in intercultural interactions; secondly, among the five components constituting the Intercultural sensitivity scale, interaction engagement is where our students get the highest point and they gain negative feelings in interaction enjoyment where they get the lowest score.Finally, the author draws conclusion on the effectiveness of the Intercultural Sensitivity so as to improve students'intercultural communication competence.