The Application Of Intercultural Communicative Approach In College English Teaching

With the development and progress of human society, the whole world has gradually become an integral whole, which is so-called "global village". Nowadays, people from different cultural backgrounds communicate more frequently. This situation requires us to cultivate college graduates who can not only freely communicate with the foreigners, but also understand the country’s culture and customs, so as not to misunderstand or dispute in the communication.However, in the years of English teaching, the teachers in universities and colleges found a very common phenomenon:many students grasp the English knowledge well, but cannot use English to express themselves well either in written English or oral English. Thomas once said:If a person with fluent English makes a pragmatic mistake in communication, the listeners are likely to consider him impolite or unfriendly. And he will not be blamed for his language competence; instead, he will be thought as "behaving badly" or "insincere, deceitful or harboring evil intentions"(Thomas,1983)Therefore, in order to improve the college English teaching and to adapt to the demand of foreign language talents for the future society, the research on cross-culture teaching and the exploration of methods of cultivating students’intercultural communication competence are of great importance."Intercultural Communication" refers to the communication between different cultural individuals. It can be divided into two parts:verbal communication and nonverbal communication. The term "Intercultural Communication" is first put forward in the classic works "The Silent Language", published by American anthropologist Edward T. Hall in1959. Up to now, intercultural communication has formed a complete scientific system.From the early1990s, the concept of "cultural teaching" gradually infiltrated into college English teaching. More and more teachers and textbook writers recognize the close relationship between language and culture. The latest edition of "College English Curriculum Requirements " in2007pointed out that "The objective of college English is to develop students’ability to use English in a well-rounded way, especially in listening and speaking, so that in their future studies and careers as well as social interactions they will be able to communicate effectively, and at the same time enhance their ability to study independently and improve their general cultural awareness so as to meet the needs of China’s social development and international exchanges." The combination of Culture teaching and college English teaching not only accord with the laws and the objectives of English teaching, but also helps to give full play to the subtle role of English teaching on students’cultural quality. There are three research questions in this thesis:1) What is the definition and current situation of intercultural communicative competence of college students?2) How can the intercultural communicative approach be applied to the teaching of New Vision College English?3) Whether is it possible for students to improve their intercultural communicative competence by this method?The research objectives of this thesis are non-English majors with almost equal English proficiency from two classes, and they are all from Yangtze University College of Technology&Engineering. And the textbook they use is "New Vision College English" published by "Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press". It proves that the application of intercultural communicative approach in teaching can improve the students’intercultural communicative competence through the empirical research on the different teaching methods in the two classes. The students of the two classes are divided into experimental group and control group:the experimental group students will get cultural teaching while the control group students will get traditional ways of teaching.First, all students will take pre-test at the very beginning of study. And there is an analysis of test results of two classes. Then different teaching methods are conducted in the two classes in one semester. Cultural knowledge is integrated into language knowledge in the English teaching of the experimental group. The main implement methods are:introducing the cultural meaning of vocabulary properly; teaching the related cultural background and the western humanism knowledge while explaining texts and creating language environment to help students get better understanding of the knowledge; cultivating students’comprehensive analysis capability and intercultural communicative competence by encouraging students to watch English movie, listen to English songs or dabble in any other kinds of extracurricular materials after class. In this process, students will enhance interest in learning English, and strengthen the comprehensive understanding of English knowledge, so as to improve practical English ability and communication ability in this process.Then, there is a post test for the students:after the study of one semester, all the students from the two classes will have another test. And also there is an analysis of the test results. Meanwhile, we get the conclusion that the application of intercultural communicative approach in college English teaching has enhanced students’ intercultural communication competence after the contrastive analysis of the post-test results and the pre-test results.