A Study On English-Major College Students' Affective Dimension Of Intercultural Communication Competence

Intercultural communication competence (ICC) is the ability to communicate appropriately and effectively with people of different cultural backgrounds, which is also the ultimate goal of learning a foreign language. Among the researches concerning ICC, topics like understanding or cultivating ICC have attracted much attention of scholars at home, but little empirical research has been conducted on the affective dimension of ICC, Meanwhile, most of the studies abroad are merely limited to sojourners although abundant empirical studies of the affective dimension of ICC have been found. Therefore, this thesis intends to investigate on the status quo of the affective dimension of Chinese English major's ICC, and to explore the key affective factors as well as their role in the process of intercultural communication.Both quantitative and qualitative studies are conducted in the thesis. In the quantitative study, the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) proposed by Chen and Starosta is adopted in the thesis to assess the intercultural sensitivity (ICS). 205 English majors from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) participated in the survey. In the qualitative study, five international teachers and ten teaching assistants, who were engaged in the teaching work of the oral English camp in HUST, were interviewed thoroughly based on a semi-structured interview protocol.The quantitative data reveal that the students'general ICS is good, with"Respect for Cultural Difference"getting the highest score and"Interaction Confidence"the lowest. The qualitative data identifies three negative affective factors and five positive affective factors. The negative factors include feeling frustrated for deficiency in language competence, being afraid of making mistakes, and displaying of certain enthnocentric tendencies. The positive factors include curiosity, confidence, mindfulness, openness and respect. Moreover, the data also reveals how these factors influence the process of intercultural communication. Based on the findings above, this thesis makes some tentative pedagogical suggestions on how to improve students'affective dimension of intercultural communication competence in foreign language program.This thesis provides new empirical evidence for the studies related to Chinese students'affective dimension of ICC. It can also be of a certain inspiration and reference for cultivating the intercultural communication competence of foreign language teaching and learning in China.