Intercultural Sensitivity Assessment Of The Postgraduates Majoring In English

Intercultural Sensitivity (ICS hereafter) is an independent concept, including self-esteem, self-monitoring, open-mindedness, empathy, interaction involvement and non-judgment (Chen & Starosta,2000). Chen & Starosta designed Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS hereafter) in order to assess ICS conveniently and accurately. The scale contains five factors, including respect for cultural difference, interaction engagement, interaction enjoyment, interaction attentiveness, and interaction confidence in the process of intercultural communicative interaction (周杏英,2007: 64). Up to now, a few scholars at home and abroad have used Chen and Starosta's ISS to assess the ICS level of different groups of subjects, including English majors, non-English majors, college teachers, and people working in foreign trading companies, etc. Therefore, this study is to assess the ICS level of postgraduates majoring in English and try to discover what individual factors, such as Work Experience and so on, influence their ICS level. This study uses Chen and Starosta's ISS to assess and analyze the ICS level of the postgraduates majoring in English from the College of Foreign Studies in Guangxi Normal University (hereafter GXNU will substitute it) of Grade 2010, in order to answer two research questions. The questions are:1) what is the postgraduates' ICS level like? 2) What individual factors influence the postgraduates'ICS?Through analyzing the 102 copies of valid questionnaires by means of Frequency analysis, Independent-Samples T test, and One-way ANOVA, the author of this study gets the following findings.1) The subjects'general ICS level is moderate for their mean ICS total score is 88.63, within the range of 80-100. According to Zhou Xingying (周杏英, 2007), the subjects' general ICS level is moderate; 2) Among the five factors of ICS, the value of Respect for Cultural Difference is the highest while Interaction Confidence is the lowest. The result indicates that the subjects can perceive and accept cultural differences, but the other side of the coin is that they still lack interaction confidence in the intercultural setting; 3) Among the subjects' individual factors, Work Experience, Having Friends from Different Cultures and Having Passed TEM8 exert significant influence on the subjects'ICS level, while factors such as Work Types, IC Courses Offered during the Undergraduate Study, Working as Volunteers, and Work Length, have no significantly statistical effect on the subjects'ICS level. However, no significant impact does not mean there is no impact at all because the results also reveal that the subjects who have had work experience for a longer period of time, or been offered IC courses during the undergraduate study, or have worked as volunteers, have a higher ICS level than those without such experiences.From the above findings, this study successfully answers the two research questions. Based on the subjects'real situations, this study analyzes the underlying causes for the findings from two perspectives. Firstly, Chinese students are greatly affected by the collectivism-oriented cultural value. Secondly, the subjects lack intercultural practice and experience. In the end, according to the results, discussion, and implications of this study, this thesis puts forward four tentative suggestions. Firstly, more systemic IC courses should be offered for the postgraduates majoring in English. Secondly, English classroom teaching should be reformed. Thirdly, more colorful English activities should be held. Fourthly, more chances of communicating with people from different cultural backgrounds should be provided for the students.