The Cultivation Of Business English Majors' Intercultural Communicative Competence In Higher Vocational Schools

Nowadays, with the acceleration of globalization, Chinese economy is closely related to the global economy. In order to meet the increasingly fierce international competition, the international organizations and companies are in urgent need of business talents with high level of Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC). As an important part of Chinese higher education, higher vocational schools must recognize this trend. Therefore, attention should be paid to the cultivation of Business English majors'ICC in order to cultivate competent business talent for the society. The present thesis thus conducts a case study in Sichuan College of Education to investigate the cultivation of Business English majors'ICC in hope of shedding light on cultivating Business English majors'ICC in higher vocational schools.A literature review on Business English and ICC reveals that the present ICC constructions are not practical considering the characteristics of Business English majors in higher vocational schools as well as the reality of Chinese foreign language teaching. Therefore, by organically combining Chen's (2009) ICC construction and related Business English theories, a more practical and comprehensive ICC construction is proposed to serve as the theoretical foundation to evaluate and cultivate Business English majors'ICC in higher vocational schools. On the basis of this theoretical foundation, a cast study is carried out to investigate the level of Business English majors'ICC and the problems existing in the current cultivation of Business English majors'ICC in Sichuan College of Education. The instruments in use are an ICC test and a structured interview. The former is employed to objectively evaluate the level of Business English majors' ICC, while the later is designed to diagnose the problems by collecting students' personal opinions and learning experience. Through analyzing the collected data, the following findings are obtained:(1) Business English majors' ICC level is low, especially their level of cognitive competence and behavioral competence.(2) Positive correlation exists between and among the four components of Business English majors' ICC.(3) There are problems in the current cultivation of Business English majors' ICC in terms of teaching content, teaching method, teaching material, and students'motivation.Following the results, corresponding suggestions are proposed as follows:(1) To construct a comprehensive ICC cultivation model to improve Business English majors' ICC. (2) To make use of the positive correlation between and among the four components of Business English majors'ICC through building business settings and fostering proper motivation, (3) To facilitate the teaching process of cultivating Business English majors'ICC by applying proper teaching methods and selecting appropriate teaching materials.These tentative suggestions are supposed to be synthetically employed by Business English teachers to cultivate and improve Business English majors'ICC in higher vocational schools.Although this research is based on a case study in Sichuan College of Education, it is of practical value to the cultivation of Business English majors' ICC cultivation in other higher vocational schools.