A Survey Of Students’ Intercultural Awareness And Intercultural Communicative Competence In China-Nova Scotia Program

Nowadays, with the development of communication media and transportation means,people communicate globally. The interaction and coexistence of people with differentbackgrounds and ethnicities have made our society more multicultural. We have more to beexposed to and share with than ever before in terms of culture---beliefs, worldviews, values,attitudes, and ideologies etc. English becomes the most widely used language in the world. Inour time of globalization, tens of thousands of Chinese middle school students have gone toforeign countries to study. They will definitely meet cultural barriers and misunderstandings.So the greatest concern to teachers of English is how to help students develop interculturalawareness and intercultural communicative competence. However, due to various reasons, theteaching of cultural differences to high school students is often ignored.As the head teacher and teacher of English, I work in China-Nova Scotia Program. Thisprogram involves from learning the Canadian textbooks to improve their English as well asknowledge of cultural background. After three years learning in this program, all of thestudents will go abroad for their university. The researcher made the survey on interculturalawareness and intercultural communicative competence of high school students in thisprogram to get actual situation of their intercultural awareness and levels of their interculturalcommunicative competent. It will help to make effective methods in the future Englishteaching and improvement of China-Nova Scotia Program to support students to besuccessful.In order to answer the research questions:(1) What is the actual situation ofintercultural awareness of Chinese senior high school students in China-Nova Scotia Program,(2) What are intercultural communicative competence levels of three grades in senior highschool in China-Nova Scotia Program, a questionnaire and test were used. The subjects are64students seventeen in Grade10, seventeen in Grade11and thirty in Grade12from theChina-Nova Scotia Program in the Middle School Attached to Hebei Normal University. Thedata were collected and analyzed. From analysis of data, the research questions are answeredas following（:1）Most students have strong intercultural awareness. They can realize languageand culture are closely related, and culture is useful and necessary, but they are less confidentand independent in learning and communication（.2）There are differences in levels of culturalcommunicative competence among three grades: Grade12is the highest; then Grade11andGrade10, which shows that after a period study in China-Nova Scotia Program, students aremore competent in communication and English learning. Based on detailed analysis of theresult, researcher attempted to provide suggestions for enhancing the intercultural awarenessof high school students and improving their intercultural communication skills.