A Comparative Study On Senior High School Students’ Intercultural Communication Competence: Students In Urban And Rural Areas

The New English Curriculum Standards for the senior high school proposes thatthe general aim of English teaching is to cultivate students’ comprehensive ability ofusing language. The formation of the overall language ability of using language isbased on the development of language skill, language knowledge, affect, learningstrategies, cultural awareness and so on. The New English Curriculum Standardspoints out that the establishment of English curriculum contributes to improvingnational population quality, promoting the opening up and international contacts andenhancing comprehensive national power. The New English Curriculum Standardspublished in2003emphasizes the cultivation of students’ intercultural awareness andthe basic intercultural communication competence. And the foundation for thecultivation of students’ intercultural communication competence lies in theunderstanding of the present situation of senior students’ intercultural communicationcompetence. Therefore, to provide some references for its cultivation, this paperinvestigates the level of senior high school students’ intercultural communicationcompetence and makes a comparative study on intercultural communicationcompetence between senior students in urban and rural areas.This paper mainly aims to know about the present situation of senior high schoolstudents’ intercultural communication competence. It investigates whether there areany differences in the level of intercultural communication competence betweenstudents in urban and rural areas and analyses the potential reasons for the differencesof intercultural communication competence between students in urban and ruralschools if there are any. Meanwhile, this article explores whether there is correlationbetween students’ English performance and their intercultural communicationcompetence. The participants in this study are students in Senior Three. Two seniorhigh schools are involved here, one is a rural school and the other is an urban school.This research mainly adopts quantitative and qualitative research methods. Thequestionnaire is to look into senior students’ intercultural communication competence.The questionnaires are filled in by420participants totally, but the valid number is357,201of whom are the senior students in the urban school while the rest are those in the rural school. As to the interview, it is mainly for getting to know the possible reasonsof the differences in intercultural communication competence between senior studentsin urban and rural areas. There are24subjects participating in the interview, with12students from each school.The findings reveal that the level of senior high school students’ interculturalcommunication competence is weak in general and there is no significant positivecorrelation between students’ English performance and intercultural communicationcompetence on the whole. Meanwhile, the results show that students from differentschools have differences in5aspects of intercultural communication competence: theuse of communicative strategies, the master of communication norms, the master ofpoliteness principles, the use of speech acts and the master of the words with strongcultural connotation. Furthermore, it is these5aspects of intercultural communicationcompetence that have low positive correlation with students’ English performance.This study shows the general situation of senior high school students’intercultural communication competence. Then it makes some pragmatic suggestionsfor both English teachers and learners and offers some reference for future research.