Assessing Intercultural Communication Competence Of Volunteers For China-ASEAN Expo

Intercultural communication competence comprises of cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects which are represented three terms---intercultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and intercultural adroitness respectively. Intercultural awareness includes basic factual information and deep structured cultural values. Six elements covering self-esteem, self-monitoring, open-mindedness, empathy, interaction involvement and non-judgment are included in intercultural sensitivity (Chen&Starosta,2000). This study attempts to assess the China-ASEAN Expo volunteers’intercultural communication competence from cognitive aspect and affective aspect. The study expects to answer four questions:1) what are the volunteers’ intercultural sensitivity (ICS) and intercultural awareness (ICA) level like?2) what are the inner elements’level of ICS and ICA like?3) what factors influence the volunteers’ICS and ICA?4) is there any correlation between volunteers’ICS and ICA?Questionnaires were distributed to volunteers in the pre-job training class and414effective questionnaires were collected. Analyzing the questionnaires by means of descriptive statistic, Frequency analysis, Independent Samples T-test, and correlation analysis, this study gets the following findings.1) the general level of volunteers’ICA is in medium-low level; the general level of ICS is in medium-high level.2) volunteers have a good command of the basic factual information of the ASEAN countries; however, they have little knowledge related to the cultural values. In aspect of ICS, volunteers’ability of suspending judgment, self-esteem, and empathy is high and open-mindedness is in middle level, whereas the ability of self-monitoring, involvement engagement is at the low level.3) gender, education background, and preparation have significant effect on volunteers’ICA level, with female’s ICA level higher than male’s, four-year undergraduate’s is higher than three-year college students’, prepared higher than unprepared. On the other hand, education background has significant impact on volunteers’ICS level, while gender and preparation have no significant influence.4) There is weak correlation between volunteers’ICA and ICS.Regarding to the problems reflected in the research, the study proposes specific suggestions for ASEAN volunteers’ recruiting and training, such as adding knowledge of value for intercultural awareness testing and adopting case study and simulation practice for intercultural training.