Cultural Teaching In Vocational College English And The Development Of Intercultural Sensitivity

Nowadays, the importance of cultivating students’ intercultural communicationcompetence has been acknowledged in the whole educational community. It hasbecome the major objective of foreign language teaching as well. Interculturalcommunication consists of the affective, the cognitive and the behavioral dimensions.Intercultural sensitivity (ICS), the affective aspect of intercultural communicationcompetence refers to the ability to develop a positive emotion towardsunderstanding and appreciating cultural differences that promotes appropriate andeffective behavior in intercultural communication. It is the indispensable element tothe success of intercultural communication.In order to test the effectiveness of culture teaching in vocational college Englishcourse in promoting the level of students’ intercultural sensitivity, the present studyemploys the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) developed by Chen and Starosta toidentify students’ levels of ICS. We make the pretest-posttest with control groupdesign, with subjects all coming from freshman students of Jiangsu City VocationalCollege (Wuxi), majoring in logistics management. The testing group participates inan18-week-long cultural learning during the fall semester of2012. The independentsample T-test is administered to analyze the overall level of vocational collegestudents’ intercultural sensitivity and the level of five constructs of ICS respectively,as well as the development of the level.The research results indicate that the overall level of non-English major studentsin vocational college is low, while culture teaching does promote students’ levels ofICS. Although students in the test group do not show a significant improvement intheir overall intercultural sensitivity levels, they make progress in three of the fiveconstructs: Interaction Engagement, Respect for Cultural Difference and InteractionConfidence. And there are significant difference between the intercultural sensitivitylevels of the test group and the control group. Meanwhile, the results indicate thatthe five constructs are closely related, and interact upon one another. In addition,students are required to finish the questionnaires designed by writer to learn the frequency of the ways how students receive foreign cultures. The result indicatedwatching foreign films and listening to English songs have the most frequency whilemaking foreign friends and chatting with foreigners have the least.It is argued that given the low intercultural sensitivity level of vocational collegestudents, the English course culture teaching and language teaching should beintegrated. Teachers should focus on students’ understanding and develop sensitivityto cultural difference, and encourage students to learn other cultures by themselves.Besides, cultural textbooks should be used to improve students’ interculturalsensitivity and intercultural communication competence, and help them well getprepared for working in a globalized world.