Investigation And Analysis Of The Intercultural Communication Competence Of Senior High School Students

With the globalization of world economy, intercultural communication(IC) has become the feature of this new era. After entering WTO, China has increased her contacts with other countries; therefore, she needs more and more people who can fully appreciate other cultures. Considering such situations, the Chinese Educational Committee has made the requirement of cultivating senior high school students' intercultural communication awareness and essential intercultural communication competence (ICC) in the English Curriculum Standards for High School (Experimental Edition). But so far, there have not been so many systematic researches on the intercultural communication competence of senior high school students.In order to know clearly the current intercultural communication competence of senior high school students and the intercultural teaching and learning of senior high schools, to explore those factors that affect intercultural communication competence of senior high school students, as well as to find out some effective methods to improve students' ICC, the researcher has tested 268 senior high school students in Shanghai about their ICC and has surveyed 40 senior high school English teachers as well as those students who had participated in test on intercultural teaching and learning through questionnaires.The results of the test show that the current ICC of senior high school students is quite low mainly due to lack of the knowledge concerning western cultural, the ethnocentrism and the negative transference effect of mother tongue. The results of those questionnaires show evidence that senior high school students' ICC is influenced remarkably by not only the time they spend in obtaining their knowledge concerning western culture but English teachers' comprehension on intercultural communication.In the last part of the paper, some suggestions have been made to improve senior high school students' ICC by means of improving English teachers' own understanding on cross-culture, some teaching principles of cross-culture and several practical teaching methods.