An Investigation Of Non-english Majors’ Intercultural Communication Competence At A Vocational College

With the rapid development of science and technology, global transportation andcommunication have been greatly improved. Since intercultural communicationsbecome quite common in our life, it is extremely important to cultivate foreignlanguage learners’ intercultural communication competence (ICC) so that they caninteract appropriately and effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds.Intercultural communication competence is an essential ingredient for the students’English education by now. Educators and scholars at home and abroad have beenconducting research on ICC and English education. However, relatively fewer areconcerned with the learners’ at vocational colleges.What’s the overall ICC of the vocational college non-English major student? Andwhat are the factors influencing their ICC? The present study attempts to investigatewhat’s the students’ ICC is like, hoping to draw some findings about the subjects’ ICCthrough an empirical study. With the implementation of international program incollege education, international program students have been a significant group forintercultural communication studies. So the subjects in the current research are thosestudents who have international program experiences.Both qualitative and quantitative surveys were employed in the investigation. In thefirst part, semi-structured interview was conducted to obtain the basic informationfrom8junior students who had returned from USA about what ICC was like. Withreference to Gersten’s (1990) intercultural theory, Intercultural Communication Modeladvocated by Yao Junwei, Zhang Xiangyang and Zhang Yina(2002) and Spitzberg andCupach (1984) ICC theory, the responses of the interviewees are categorized into sixdimensions of ICC. Then a self-report questionnaire was designed based on thecomponents of ICC drawn from the interview responses. The participants who weredoing their practicum in USA were asked to do the questionnaires. And33completed questionnaires were collected in the end. SPSS13.0was employed to test the validityand reliability of the questionnaires. Four aspects of ICC involved in the questionnairewere examined to verify the participants’ abilities in intercultural communication. Italso examined the correlation among the components of ICC. Findings of theparticipants’ ICC were drawn below:1) The subjects’ overall ICC is extremely low and their communication withAmericans ends to be on the surface.2) The subjects’ English language proficiency and western cultural knowledge needto be fostered.3) The length of intercultural contact time and the number of interculturalcommunicators influence the subjects’ ICC.4) The subjects have high motivation to contact with the local people, which greatlyinfluences their performances in terms of language proficiency, culturalunderstanding and social interaction, but they still have certain difficulty inimmersion into the host culture.The survey also probed into what the participants’ performances were inintercultural communication. What strategies the subjects shall adopt to improve theirEnglish learning.Corresponding suggestions based on the findings of the empirical investigation areoffered in the study, with the purpose of providing the decision makers with measuresof cultivating students’ ICC. Finally the limitations of the study were pointed out anddirections for further research were offered.