A Survey Of Intercultural Communicaton Competence In Senior High School

The main purpose of teaching English language is to enable students to communicate with native English-speakers. Apart from the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary about English language, the ability of Intercultural Communication is of great importance. To cultivate and improve Senior High School students' Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), it is necessary to understand their actual Intercultural Communicative Competence. What are the main factors that influence Senior Middle School students'Intercultural Communicative Competence? The researcher conducted a study on cultivating students'Intercultural Communicative Competence among 100 students from Beijing No.15 Senior High School. Through test and analysis on students'ICC, the researcher found what influence students'ICC, and also provided effective teaching instructions on promoting students'ICC.There are two phases of the research. In the first phase, a questionnaire was addressed to investigate students'attitudes toward intercultural awareness; the second phase was a test with the purpose of finding out students'Intercultural Communicative Competence. The result revealed that the students'Intercultural Communicative Competence is low. To be specific, the main reasons that influenced senior high school students'ICC include:(1)Senior High School students are unfamiliar with the background knowledge of English-speaking countries, and their cultural sensitivity is low.(2)Senior Middle School students'Intercultural Communicative Competence is affected by negative transfer of their mother tongue.Based on the research result mentioned above, the researcher further proposed some teaching strategies, such as improving English teachers'intercultural knowledge and cultivating students'interest and other feasible and practical approaches.