A Study On Cultivating Students’ Inter Cultural Communicative Competence In Senior High School English Teaching

The English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School,issued by the Ministry of Education in 2003, requires to cultiv ate senior high school studen ts’ intercultural communicative competence(for short, ICC). With our country’s reform and opening up policy and the globalization of world economy, the communication with people from other cultures become common. Therefore, how to make intercultural communication successful has drawn great attention, and cultivating intercultural communicative competence has been one of the ultimate goals of foreign language teaching.This thesis attempts to explore the current situation of ICC cultivation in senior high school FLT, the main factors influencing the cultivation and the strategies to im prove that situation. It employs a quantitative design and a qualitative design. The quantitative design is made up of one students ’ ICC test and two questionnaire s, one for students, and the other for teachers, aiming to find out the actual situation of ICC cultivation in English teaching and learning. The qualitative design, an interview, aims to find out the reasons of that situation and to search for strategies to improve that situation.Based on the data collected, the study finds that intercultural knowledge teaching and intercultural communicative competence cultivation have not been paid much attention to at the foreign language teaching in senior high schools,and students’ ICC is far from being satisfactory. According to the inte rview, there are three reasons for that result. First, the College Entrance Examination sys tem makes teachers an d students mainly focus on language points, neglecting culture conten t in English teaching and learning. Second, English teachers’ ICC proficiency is not satis factory which directly influences students’ ICC proficiency. Third, strate gies are not suf ficient when English teachers im plement culture teaching. Finally, the author puts forward som e suggestions on how to improve senior high school students’ intercultural communicative competence, which includes: firstly, changing the current evaluation system; secondly, improving English teachers’ ICC proficiency and ICC teaching theory and methods; thirdly, creating a helpful environment.