A Study On High School English Teachers’ Multicultural Awareness And Intercultural Communicative Competence

There is no doubt that language is an integrated component of culture andlanguage learning is also culture learning. Cultivating language learners’ interculturalawareness and intercultural communicative competence is one of the ultimate goalsof English language learning. In2003, the Ministry of Education has set out therequirements of cultivating senior high school students’ intercultural awareness anddeveloping their intercultural communicative competence. Hence, the students, thelanguage learners, have become the center of the research. However, less research hasbeen done on English teachers, on their intercultural awareness and interculturalcommunicative competence, especially on teachers from minority autonomousprefecture.This thesis makes a study on the present state of the intercultural awareness andintercultural communicative competence of teachers from minority autonomousprefecture, trying to find out the underlying factors which account for thisphenomenon.This paper also states the fact that culture has become an increasing importantpart of English language teaching nowadays, and the conception of communicativecompetence has been expanded as it is a vital part in intercultural communicativecompetence, but the intercultural awareness and intercultural communicativecompetence of language learners largely depend on their teachers, which is a bigchallenge for teachers.The rationale for the thesis is a model proposed by Byram in1997, who is afamous sociologist. He holds that intercultural knowledge, intercultural awarenessand intercultural behavior are the three layers of intercultural communicativecompetence. Based on this theory, the research has59teachers involved.This study employed quantitative research and qualitative research. Thequantitative research refers to teachers attitudes to multicultural society andmulticultural education. The questionnaire of this part consulted the one made byPronterotto,J.G.and other teachers, combining the actual situation of Xishuangbanna. The questionaire includes two parts: the first part is teachers’ attitudes towardsmulticultural society and multicultural education; the second part is teachers’conception and practice on multicultural education in their teaching practice. Theinterview mainly focuses on intercultural communicative competence in teachers’daily teaching and9interviewees were randomly selected from the schools where thequestionnaires were delivered.From the data collected from the research, the major findings are summarized asfollows: English teachers have positive attitudes towards the multicultural society andmulticultural education due to their multicultural living environment. However,teachers do not carry out culture teaching and cultivate students’ interculturalcommunicative competence to a satisfied degree as it is required by the curriculum.On the one hand, the multicultural knowledge and skills teachers have are not enoughto implement culture teaching. On the other hand, culture teaching and the cultivationof intercultural communicative competence do not have a significant position wheneducational factors are evaluated.Based on the findings of the research, the thesis points out that it are high timethat we need to improve the multicultural awareness and intercultural communicativecompetence of English teachers at senior middle schools. Meanwhile, the thesis givessome suggestions on how to improve teachers’ multicultural awareness andintercultural communicative competence, which include offering intercultural trainingfor teachers and the principles and strategies of cultivating multicultural awarenessand intercultural communicative competence.