A Study Of Using Original English Movies To Improve College Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence

Film, the Seventh Art form, is a most intuitive, vivid and unique way for exporters of culture to share their language and culture to all over the world. Through English movies, teachers provide learners with real examples of ordinary language use, examples which have very vivid and specific content and which consequently improve learners’ interest and learning efficiency. Consequently, learners are enhancing their intercultural communication consciousness imperceptibly while enjoying the trinity of visual, auditory and express. With stronger intercultural communication competence, students will therefore be able to appropriately utilize cross-cultural communication conducted in English across the nation, to help us build a smooth communication bridge between people of different ethnic groups.English movies not only expose students to standard pronunciation, intonation and terminology, but also vividly feature examples of Western history, culture, customs, religions and values. Consequently, at the same time that students are learning a language, they are also learning about Western culture, cultivating greater awareness or appreciation of intercultural communication, or further promoting the learning of language, so as to improve the teaching effects. Therefore, the questionnaire of this thesis is designed to provide research about the basic situation of college students’ intercultural communication competence(ICC). In order to answer the following three research questions:1. What is the current status of college students’ ICC?2. How can the method of teaching with English movies contribute to college students’ ICC?3. What are the pedagogical implications of this research for English teaching?The author randomly surveyed 160 students of Liaoning Normal University. Its results reveal that the current college students’ intercultural communication competence is at a low level. The author later investigated and analyzed English movies’ influence on students’ intercultural communication competence, and then the author presents some recommendations from the teachers and students’ perspectives.Teachers should make sufficient preparation before English teaching. As a teacher, it is also very important to select a suitable movie for students. Students should review the movie after-class consciously. In this way, teachers and students intercultural communicative competence will be enhanced.This thesis is divided into five parts. The first part expounds the research purposes, the research question, its significance and the structure of this paper. The second part is the literature review. This part introduces the theoretical foundation, from constructivism to intercultural communicative competence theory, as it is elaborated in the concept of intercultural communication and its constituent elements. It also reviews the domestic and foreign related research results about cross-cultural communication ability training, and the relationship between film and cross-cultural communication teaching. The third part is about the author’s investigation method, survey design. Based on the preceding information, in part four, the author analyses the data collected from researching and investigating the current situation of college students’ intercultural communicative competence. The final part, the conclusion, summarizes the main content of this thesis, puts forward specific recommendations to college students about intercultural communication competence to apply to their studies, recommendations which will also be revelatory for teachers’ teaching methods. It also points out the limitations of this research and suggests research proposals for further research.