An Empirical Study On Critical Incidents For Intercultural Sensitivity Development Among College Non-english Majors

With the increasing tendency of globalization, the perception has been graduallyacknowledged that the ultimate objective of English teaching and learning should becultivating a learner into―an intercultural person‖equipped with strong interculturalcommunication competence (ICC competence). In China, a very significantproportion of English-learners are college non-English majors, therefore masses ofrecommendations and proposals have been put forward to develop their ICCcompetence or intercultural sensitivity level in the process of College English courses.However, most of the proposals and techniques recommended are subjectiveassumptions without any empirical or experimental studies to assess their actualeffects. Therefore, the first purpose of the empirical study reported in this paper is toassess the actual effects of―Critical Incidents,‖one of the intercultural trainingtechniques, on Chinese college non-English majors‘development of interculturalsensitivity level. The second intention is to explore the practical values and benefits ofadding a new column/section entitled―Increasing Your Intercultural Sensitivity‖inthe future college English textbook compilation. Results from the empirical studyshow that the technique of―Critical Incidents‖has positive effects in improvingcollege non-English majors‘two aspects of intercultural sensitivity (namely, Respectfor Cultural Differences and Interaction Confidence), but it is not effective in theother three aspects (namely, Interaction Engagement, Interaction Enjoyment, andInteraction Attentiveness). The data collected from the feedback questionnaires andthe information gathered from the feedback interviews support the significance andpractical meanings of adding a new column/section about intercultural sensitivityimprovement in future College English textbook compilation. It is also worthrecommending that in this new section various kinds of ways and techniques beadopted to make this section more interesting and attracting.