An Empirical Research On The Intercultural Communicative Competence Of Senior High School Students

With the globalization of the world economy, intercultural communication has become the key feature of this new era. China's entering the WTO has increased her contacts with many other countries. Therefore, people who can fully appreciate different cultures are in greater need. Such tendency considered, the Chinese Education Committee has set the requirements of cultivating senior high school students' intercultural communicative awareness and essential intercultural communicative competence in the English Curriculum Standards for High School (experimental edition). But up to now, there have been few systematic researches into the subject of intercultural communicative competence of senior high school students, not to mention empirical researches.How is the level of intercultural communicative competence of senior high school students? How to cultivate senior high school students' intercultural communicative competence? The author of the thesis has tested 288 senior high school students in Jingzhou City, Hubei Province about their intercultural communicative competence and has surveyed 53 senior high school English teachers as well as those students who had participated in the test on the teaching and learning of intercultural communication by means of questionnaires.The results of the test indicate that the current intercultural communicative competence of senior high school students is quite low, mainly due to lack of the knowledge concerning western cultures (especially U.K. & U.S.A.), the enthnocentrism and the negative transference effect of the mother language. The results of those questionnaires show that senior high school students' intercultural communicative competence is obviously influenced by the motivation and effectiveness of intercultural communication learning and English teachers' comprehension upon intercultural communication as well as the inharmoniousness between the teaching and learning of intercultural communication.How to cultivate senior high school students' intercultural communicative competence? Based on the findings of the research, the author of the thesis has suggested senior high school students' intercultural communicative competence be improved through improving senior high school English teachers' own comprehension of inter-culture, following the teaching principles of inter-culture and carrying out several practical and effective teaching methods, such as the PTPC Model etc.