An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Linguistic Competence And Intercultural Communicative Competence

Consensus has been reached that intercultural communicative competence (brief inICC) is the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching, but the role of foreign languageproficiency in ICC still remains a controversial issue, and few studies have probed therelationship between them. The purpose of this paper is to report an empirical study whichexplores the relationship between linguistic competence and ICC. Two research questionshave been addressed:1) is there a significant difference in intercultural communicativecompetence between students of high linguistic competence and those of low linguisticcompetence?2) Is linguistic competence able to predict ICC significantly? If yes, is it thebest predictor among the six components of ICC (namely linguistic competence,sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, socio-culturalknowledge, socio-cultural competence)? If no, which component(s) will be able to predictICC significantly?264undergraduates attending Summer English camp in Huazhong University ofScience and Technology in2011were investigated through a self-evaluation questionnaire,the design of which is based mainly on Van Ek’s model of communicative ability and WenQiufang’s model of ICC. The questionnaire consists of seven components: generalevaluation of ICC, self-perceived foreign language proficiency, sociolinguisticcompetence, discourse competence, strategic competence, socio-cultural knowledge andsocio-cultural intercultural competence. Through exploratory factor analysis andreliability test, the questionnaire demonstrates acceptable validity and reliability (0.901overall).After conducting independent sample T-test, it is found that there is significantdifference in ICC between students of high linguistic competence and those of lowlinguistic competence. Multiple Regression analysis shows that socio-cultural competence,discourse competence and linguistic competence could predict ICC significantly, withinfluencing power in a descending order. The results show that linguistic competenceplays an important role in ICC, but socio-cultural competence and discourse competenceare more important than linguistic competence. Based on the findings, the thesis gave tentative suggestions to both the cultivationand teaching of ICC in China. Meanwhile, the limitations of the study were pointed outand the suggestions for further study were put forward.