The Development Of Intercultural Communication Competence In Foreign Language Teaching

With the rapid development of technology and society, the globalization is the main-stream of world development. Because of the frequent communication and close connection between the people all over the world, and especially after China entered the WTO, foreign languages are used more and more widely. In the intercultural communication, if one is ignorant of the culture and customs of the other, he/she is surely unable to have a good understanding of the other and can't carry on communication further. As English is the most widely used language, it's quite necessary for us to know the culture and customs of the people in the English-speaking countries. That's the reason why we need not only to improve the language skills, but also to cultivate students'intercultural communication.competence (ICC).In this paper, the author begins with having discussion about the definition of language, culture, communication, and intercultural communication competence (ICC) and analyzes the situation of intercultural communication research. According to some sociologists and anthropologists, culture is communication. In intercultural communication (IC), communicative acts have different meanings in different cultures because of the cultural differences, which inevitablely leads to misunderstanding and miscommunication. Based on mentioned above, the author then discusses the reasons causing the failures made by students in the intercultural commucation. This is because, firstly, the idea of the traditional English teaching takes root in the hearts of the senior high school English teachers. Grammar, translation, language points are still playing a major part in English classes, where students can get no chance or very little chance to practice and cultivate the intercultural communication competence. Secondly, the negative transference effect of mother tongue makes students make mistakes in intercultural communication. The last is inadequate knowledge of the target culture and insufficient exposures which are the foundemental causes of many culture mistakes.Then, what is the situation of the culture teaching in the foreign language teaching (FLT) in senior high school? The author made questionnaires and a test to investigate the English sociocultural competence between the teachers and the students in No. 12 Middle School in Fushun and found that the situation of culture teaching in senior high schools is far from satisfactory. Flawed teaching materials, taught by deficient teachers, impractical testing system and students' improper learning styles contribute to students' inadequate cultural knowledge. To meet the needs of the modern society and individual's development, culture teaching has become emergent. Based on the survey in this dissertation, some suggestions and teaching principles have been made to improve senior high school students' intercultural communication competence (ICC), such as: refining the textbooks, strengthening the training of English teachers by developing their bicultural ability, improving the teaching approaches, and cultivating the students'cross-cultural communicative awareness and ability and so on.