Cultivation And Improvement Of Intercultural Communication Competence In Adult English Teaching

With the increasingly frequent exchange between countries, interculturalcommunication has become so inevitable that the need for talents who have adequateintercultural communication competence confronts teachers with the issue how totrain students’ intercultural communication competence in teaching process.In recent years, more and more adults have re-stepped into colleges anduniversities for further education. On one hand, the rapid development of socialeconomy results in the increasingly fierce competition in talents market, whichimposes potential pressure on adults of all fields of the society. Faced with thepressure, some adults internalize pressure into power to meet the challenge withfurther education to become more adequate and professional for their positions. Onthe other hand, further education in college and university can satisfy adults’ need forself-improvement. Most adults consider English as a useful tool to enlarge knowledgeand facilitate communication. Therefore, adult students are eager to manage it. Adultshave unique learning characteristics. Their social status and education backgroundmay be good or not good for their further English learning but their understanding oflanguage points is good so they may spend less time in analyzing what they arelearning. In addition, they don’t have enough time for English learning, which make itdifficult for teachers to set discipline for supervision. Therefore, both teachers andadult students should work together to find effective ways for the cultivation andimprovement of intercultural communication competence in adult English teaching.It has been proved in the experiment carried out by the author that by selectingand enriching the teaching materials and carrying out some effective teachingmethods such as classic movie appreciation, contrastive reading, business case studies,role plays, group discussion, online-class creation and micro-lecture, the teachers canhelp to stimulate adult students’ motivation to learn English and improve theirintercultural communication competence. In addition, teachers who are in charge ofadult English teaching should conform to the teaching principles, lay emphasize onupdating teaching theory and great attention must be paid to linking theory withteaching practice，teachers should also explore teaching reforms in adult Englishteaching and find the suitable position in teaching process in order to direct studentsto autonomic learning. Of course, adult students, who are the subjects in adult English teaching and learning process should correct attitude to English leaning, set cleargoals for English study, participate in English learning activities on class and afterclass and try to find out their own ways to learning English, improve leaningefficiency and finally improve their intercultural communication competence.The thesis consists of six parts. It begins with introduction, in which the studybackground, significance, methodology, and the layout of the thesis are brieflyintroduced. Some research about intercultural communication at home and abroad aresummarized in Chapter One, which also talks about the current situation for adultEnglish teaching in China. In Chapter Two, language, culture, communication and therelationship between them are illustrated. The Sapir Wolf Hypothesis is elaborated toverify the inseparable relationship among language, culture and communication.Chapter Three is an empirical study of the issue to cultivate and improve theintercultural communication competence in adult English teaching. In this chapter, allthe data analyzed by using SPSS19.0are presented, as well as the whole experimentalprocedure. In Chapter Four some suggestions for both teachers and students are putforward to cultivate intercultural communication competence and the thesis ends upwith a conclusion in which some suggestions for further research and the limitation ofthis thesis are also discussed.