| The practice of intercultural communication can be traced back to early period inhuman history. Today the statement that the world is becoming a global village hasbecome a common understanding. With the globalization process and rapiddevelopment of communication, transportation and media technology, interculturalcommunication becomes more and more important. With more and more Interculturalinteractions, the importance of increasing Intercultural communication competencewhich plays a significant role in Intercultural communication becomesself-explanatory. University graduates with the enhancement of Interculturalcommunication competence are needed.This research is an empirical one which is conducted to explore the bidirectionalinput of culture from the perspective of intercultural communication with ateaching-testing experiment in college English language teaching. It attempts to provethat the application of culture teaching, which includes both target language cultureand native culture, could enhance the intercultural communication competence ofstudents to some extent. Both quantities and qualitative analysis are adapted in theresearch for the sake of answering the research questions.As to the topic of culture, language and intercultural communication, a lot ofconceptual issues are involved. In order to help clarify the themes discussed in thisthesis, it is appropriate to define and explain them properly. The relationship betweenculture and language has been discussed and studied by many educators and scholars.The insightful and inspirational papers on these topics are countless. In this thesis, thegeneral definitions of language, culture and communication and related concepts onprevious research both foreign and domestic are provided.In this recent study, the researcher expects to find out the current situation ofculture teaching in CET and to prove that the bidirectional introduction of culture incollege English teaching can positively influence the students’ interculturalcommunication competence. SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions)17.0forWindows in short, is adopted in this study as the key implement of data analyzing.There are two research questions conceptualized mainly in this thesis: first, whatis the current situation of culture teaching in Chinese college English teaching; second,whether the bidirectional introduction of culture in college English teaching caninfluence students’ Intercultural communication competence positively.Within this research, these two questions can be categorized into two dimensionsfurther. The first one is with respect to Question One and thrashes out a generaldepiction of Chinese current culture teaching situation. So as to find out the answersof Question One, two questionnaires are carried out.50English teachers who arevoluntary to attend the experiment finish the Questionnaire to Teachers and all thequestionnaire receipts are withdrew. And entirely191students who attend the experiment are asked to finish the Questionnaire to Students and187validquestionnaire receipts are withdrawn. From the data got from the two questionnaires,it could be concluded that the importance of culture bidirectional input has struck rootin the hearts of both English teachers and college students, but English textbooks andclass teaching could not provide enough Chinese culture nowadays. Though someteachers introduce culture in their class, there is no systemic or popular method ofculture bidirectional input. And compared with English culture teaching, the output ofChinese culture still has a long way to go.In order to find out the answers of Question Two, two tests, the pre-experimenttest and the post-experiment test, are carried out in this study.191none-English majorcollege students come from Heping Campus Jilin University in grade2010are chosenas the subjects of research. Randomly the students are separated into two groups: thecontrol group (CG in short) and the experimental group (EG for short). Students fromVeterinary Medicine and Agriculture Economy Management belong to CG (totally97persons) and students from Logistic Management and Agriculture are treated asmembers of EG (totally93persons). Students both in CG and EG are asked toparticipate in these two tests which are designed to test students’ interculturalcommunication competence before and after the treatment. The full score of each testis one hundred.380valid answer sheets of the two tests (190of each) are collectedsuccessfully and scored. The results of the two tests are analyzed and compared.In the pre-experiment test, participants in both CG and EG get relatively lowscores, this infers that student’s intercultural communication competence still needs tobe enhanced. Many things should be responsible for this phenomenon. InterculturalCommunication is still a young subject with a short history. Though more and morespecialists, teachers and students begin to realize this importance, the system of thetheory is still not perfect. How to improve student’s Intercultural communicationcompetence is still a question. Scores of the post-experiment show there areobservable differences between CG and EG. In CG, students’ scores are improved,while the increase is not marked. In traditional English class, students can also getsome knowledge about culture, but the knowledge is scattered and unilateral. Thus,after a period of study, students’ knowledge about the language is improved, but thecompetence of intercultural communication is not heightened greatly. Thephenomenon that students who get high scores in English examinations can notcommunicate with foreigners freely is very common in China. Many scholars andeducators try to find effective methods to change this kind of situation. Bidirectionalinput of culture is proved to be a measure. In EG, the advance of students’ scores isobvious. Language is the tool of communication and culture is the content ofcommunication. Without culture knowledge, people can not communicate with eachothers. And communication flows both ways. Communication of two kinds of cultureshould be learning and affecting each other. Hence, during interculturalcommunication, not only is the foreign language culture essential, but also the nativelanguage culture is necessary.The research of culture bidirectional input in college English teaching is still ininvestigative stage and more and further studies both theoretical and empirical are needed in the future. To a large extent, the whole process of this study is a successfulone, but there are still some unavoidable weaknesses and limitations. It is hoped thatthe findings of this study will provide some useful information for the further relevantresearch and arouse more concern about culture teaching, especially the nativelanguage culture output in English. |
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