A Comparative Study On Senior High School Students’ Intercultural Communication Competence In Two Cities Of Jiangxi And Guangxi Province

The English Curriculum Standard for the ordinary high school clearly puts forward that high school students are not only required to master a language, but also master the culture connotation of the language, forming a certain emotional attitude and cultural awareness, and on this basis to improve the comprehensive capacity in using language. In addition, the provinces of all over the country began to fully implement the new curriculum reform successively, which may exert different impacts on students? intercultural communication competence(ICC). So this article chooses two different provinces, namely, Jiangxi and Guangxi, in order to investigate their high school students? ICC; meanwhile, this research makes a comparative study on ICC between senior high students in the two cities of Jiangxi and Guangxi, spying the current situation of students? ICC in Jiangxi and Guangxi. What? more, practical and feasible suggestions and solutions will also be mentioned.The subjects in this research are students in Senior One of different provincial key middle schools from Jiangxi and Guangxi, and both of them lie in prefecture-level city. The questionnaires are filled out by 310 subjects, among which 274 are valid; 122 are senior students from Jiangxi, while 152 are from Guangxi. As for the in-depth interview, 5 participants are chosen randomly and respectively from the two schools in the two cities of Jiangxi and Guangxi.The findings show that the general situation of senior high school students? ICC level is not strong, but some aspects of ICC are acceptable, so it implicates that the unbalanced development of students? ICC level. Besides, both in the two cities of Jiangxi and Guangxi, the girls have a relatively higher level in ICC. And the correct rates of both the boys and the girls in Guangxi are higher than those in Jiangxi on the whole. In addition, students? ICC level in the two cities of Jiangxi and Guangxi is not accordance with their English performance. There is significant difference between students in the two schools from Jiangxi and Guangxi in such parts as the grasp of intercultural communication context, the use of communicative strategies and the master of speech acts, and the total scores of the two schools. And there is certain correlation between students? English performance and the parts of the use of communicative strategies, the master of communication norms and full scores of the questionnaire. Furthermore, there is low association between the English performance and the use of speech acts in Jiangxi.The possible reasons may be that Guangxi has carried out the reform of new curriculum in senior high school in the recent three years; so many schools have heightened interest in it. Most of their teaching behaviors put great importance on the new curriculum. Virtually, this exerts a positive effect on students? cognitive about ICC. And although Jiangxi province has been carrying out the new course innovation for so many years, its teaching mode has not been fundamentally changed. The grammar translation method is still overwhelming. Besides, the students in both of the two prefecture-level cities have many opportunities to access to the materials related to the English speaking countries, no matter in the English class or out of class. But English teachers? instruction is far enough in terms of using different kinds of materials. Besides, English class is deficient in developing students? ICC.