A Comparative Study On The Intercultural Sensitivity Of Chinese Postgraduates At Home And Abroad

Cultivating students’ intercultural communication competence is the mainobjective of foreign language teaching at all times. How to effectively develop andenhance students’ intercultural communication competence has been gained widespreadconcern among scholars at home and abroad. Intercultural sensitivity (ICS) is one ofimportant components of intercultural communication competence. Some researchesshow that the relationship between intercultural sensitivity and interculturalcommunication competence is a positive correlation. Hence, cultivating students’intercultural sensitivity contributes to the improvement of students’ interculturalcommunication competence, which is beneficial to intercultural communication.A growing number of scholars at home and abroad have conducted a lot of studieson ICS. However, the empirical researches on ICS are relatively inadequate. Theresearch subjects are mainly limited to undergraduates and multinational companyemployees, whereas few researches touch upon postgraduates’ intercultural sensitivity.Thus, Chinese postgraduates at home and abroad are served as the research subjects anda comparative study on the level of ICS between them is conducted in this paper. Firstand foremost, descriptive statistics is used to describe the current situation of the ICS ofChinese postgraduates at home and abroad, and then independent samples t-test isemployed to explore the differences of the ICS between Chinese postgraduates at homeand abroad. Furthermore, correlation analysis and independent samples t-test are used toinvestigate the relationship between the time length of studying abroad and the ICS ofChinese postgraduates studying abroad. Finally, correlation analysis is utilized toexpose the interrelationships among each factor of the ICS of Chinese postgraduates athome and abroad.The results show that the level of ICS of Chinese postgraduates studying abroad ishigher than that of Chinese postgraduates at home. Moreover, there is no significantdifference on interactive engagement, interactive confidence and interactiveattentiveness between Chinese postgraduates at home and abroad; In terms of respectfor cultural differences and interactive enjoyment, Chinese postgraduates studyingabroad is higher than that of Chinese postgraduates at home. In addition, as for Chinesepostgraduates studying abroad, the time length of studying abroad is positivelycorrelated with their ICS, the longer they study abroad, the higher ICS they possess. Atlast, each factor of the ICS between Chinese postgraduates at home and abroad turns outdifferent correlations. Based on the result, suggestions are made on how to enhance ICSof Chinese postgraduates at home in this paper. Through investigation into the ICS of Chinese postgraduates at home and abroad,the author hopes to expose the status quo of the intercultural sensitivity of Chinesepostgraduates at home and abroad, which can be the reference for the interculturaleducation of Chinese postgraduates at home.