Research On The Relationship Between Intercultural Communication Competence And English Learning Motivation Of College Students

The researches of language learning motivation and intercultural communication can be traced backed to the 1950th. Since Gardner proposed the concept of motivation in second language learning, many scholars have conducted numerous researches and developed various theories on motivation. Intercultural communication originated from America. With the strengthening of the connection between different countries, many intercultural communication problems emerged. As a result, in the field of foreign language teaching, people began to focus on the training of communication competence, instead of language competence, such as the grammar, reading ability. The solutions on how to improve the intercultural communication competence have already become an urgent task for language educators. In China, the researches on motivation and intercultural communication competence started from the 1980th. Most of the theories are introduced from abroad. Despite that there are abundant papers and articles discussing these two concepts both at home and abroad, empirical studies on the relationship between the language learning motivation and intercultural communication competence is rare. This thesis is conducted based on this fact.The ultimate purpose of the thesis is to investigate the relationship between ICC and English learning motivation of college students. So firstly the author mainly focus on the measurement of the overall level of ICC of college students of non-English major and their English learning motivations by answers of 150 students. Secondly, the correlation coefficients are computed in the SPSS to analyze their relationship. Theories on motivation and ICC are discussed in the thesis. Two questionnaires are designed to collect data from 150 college students.Results are obtained by analysis of data in SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science). It showed that students do not have very strong motivation to learn English. Among the three types of motivations, the instrumental and intrinsic motivation are equally influential in driving students to learn English, while the extrinsic motivation is not as effective as the other two. The overall score of ICC is slightly above the average, neither too high nor too low. Among the three components of ICC, students show the lowest confidence in their knowledge. The results of Pearson product-moment correlations indicate that there is significant and positive correlation between motivation and ICC. However, the correlation coefficients of the three components of motivation and the three components of ICC are different. It is discovered that there is lack of statistical significance of correlation between instrumental motivation and ICC.The research on the correlation between the motivation and ICC can shed new light on the foreign language teaching and on the training of intercultural communication competence.