A Study On The Intercultural Communication Competence Of Junior Middle School Students

The intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is an important part ofsecond language learners’ communicative language ability; and the cultivation of ICCsuch as cultural awareness is one of the accomplishments of the students’comprehensive language development, which is not only beneficial to improve thestudents’ communicative language ability, but also to better understand the cultures ofdifferent countries. Therefore many researchers concentrate on the overall pictures ofICC of graduates and high school students. However, previous studies are mainlyintended to understand the college students and high school students’ ICC. In order tofully understand students’ ICC in different stages, this paper aims to present the juniorhigh school students’ ICC as well as teachers and students’ awareness, interest,attitudes and etc. towards ICC.The paper is to explore the general picture of intercultural communicativecompetence of168junior middle school students from a key and a common juniormiddle school and the possible differences in ICC between learners from differentschools and from key and common classes through a socio-culture test.Questionnaires for students and teachers are conducted to explore their opinions aboutteaching and learning culture. The questionnaires are partly chosen from DuShuguang’s study on cultural instruction of senior English under new Englishcurriculum standard in Hohhot (2011) and adapted accordingly. Besides thequestionnaire for teachers involves one more part, which is teachers’ self-evaluationabout cultivation of ICC.The findings are the following:1) The general proficiency of junior middle schoolstudents’ ICC is moderate;2) There are significant differences in each part ofstudents’ ICC between common school and key school;3) There is no significantdifference in students’ ICC of the total part between common class and key class fromkey school; But there is a significant difference in politeness principles; And there is asignificant difference in the cultural competence between students in common classand key class from common school in general. However, the result shows that thereare significant differences in students’ ICC in conversational principles andexpressions with strong cultural connotation.4) There is correlation between English performance and students’ ICC in each part.5) Although students show high interest,positive attitudes, better understanding on culture knowledge, their awareness of ICCand measure for cultivation of ICC remain to be improved and enriched.In addition, teachers nearly have high interest, understanding, and optimisticattitudes towards culture knowledge. However, their awareness of ICC, measure forcultivation of ICC and self-evaluation about cultivation of ICC require ameliorating.The results show that the junior middle school students’ ICC and their awarenessof ICC still need to be improved and teachers also ought to improve their awarenessof culture teaching and enrich their methods of culture teaching. Thus the paper putsforward some practical suggestions for junior middle school students and Englishteachers and provides reference for English teaching and research in the future.