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An Investigation Into College Students' Intercultural Communicative Competence In English Learning

Posted on:2017-03-16Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:S YuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2335330485977868Subject:Second Language Acquisition
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In China, the college English teachers pay more attention to the cultivation of students' vocabulary and grammar, not in the teaching and learning of Intercultural Communicative Competence. With the rapid development of globalization, intercultural communications among different cultures have become more and more frequent in the daily life and Intercultural Communicative Competence have been indispensable ability in intercultural activities. Nowadays, the cultivation of Intercultural Communicative Competence is not only an important issue in intercultural interaction field, but also a key area to enhance college students' comprehensive linguistic competence. Therefore, how to develop students' ICC has become a hot research topic for both English teachers and researchers.Based on the relevant research on Intercultural Communicative Competence from both at home and abroad, the study explored the current situation of college students' Intercultural Communicative Competence. Concretely, the paper explored four research questions:(1) the current status of college students' ICC;(2) the differences in students' small “c” culture and big “C” Culture;(3) the differences in students' verbal and nonverbal intercultural competence;(4) the differences in students' ICC between high language proficiency level students and low language proficiency level students. The subjects in this study were 124 college students randomly selected from Jiangxi Normal University, and all of the participants were the third-year students. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are employed to collect data for this research. In the quantitative study, a socio-cultural test by Wang Zhenya(1990) was used to test students ICC. In the qualitative study, the author designed interviewed questions and 10 students were interviewed to collect the data for a deep understanding of the students' ICC. All of the collected data in the research were analyzed by SPSS 16.0.By analyzing the data collected, this study reveals a number of findings:(1) The general level of college students' ICC is relatively weak.(2) College students' small “c” culture knowledge is better than big “C” Culture, and there is a significant difference between college students' small “c” culture and big “C” Culture.(3) Students' Non-verbal communication level is lower than students' Verbal communication level and there is a significant difference between students' Non-verbal and Verbal communication level.(4) There are significant differences in ICC between high language proficiency students and low language proficiency students in general ICC, and the students with low proficiency are equipped with lower ICC than those with high proficiency.Based on the findings in this study above, there are several implications for English teaching and learning that can be offered. First of all, it is necessary to reform present teaching methodologies, testing system and curriculum design, and contain more cultural knowledge, especially the contents of nonverbal communication in teaching materials to foster college students' ICC. Next, teachers and students should be aware of the importance of ICC, and try their best to enhance students' ICC level. Thirdly, teachers should build cultural atmosphere to improve students' ICC. Finally, teachers should improve themselves in terms of professional knowledge and culture knowledge.
Keywords/Search Tags:Intercultural Communicative Competence, Language Proficiency, Foreign Language Teaching, College Students
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