A Study On Intercultural Sensitivity Among Non-English Majors In Vocational College

As society and culture rapidly burgeon and foreign exchange activities frequently happen,intercultural communication exerts more and more important effect on this new era.Intercultural sensitivity is the emotional aspect of intercultural communication competence,which represents the change of a person's emotion and feeling when he or she interacts with a partner who belongs to another culture under a special situation.One of the teaching purposes of The Basic Requirement for Vocational Education of English Teaching Trial Version in 2000 demonstrates definitely that English communication competence of the vocational students should be improved.As the crucial ingredient of intercultural communication competence,intercultural sensitivity plays a vital role in promoting the intercultural communication competence of learners at vocational colleges.This paper applies the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale which was designed by Chen&Starosta,SPSS 20,and Pearson correlation together to analyze the statistics which is collected from 220 non-English majors who study in vocational colleges in Beihai Guangxi china.Based on the results of the questionnaire,ten students are chosen to do a deeper interview.And the questionnaire and the interview are done mainly to answer the following three questions:1)What is the current level of intercultural sensitivity among non-English majors in vocational college?2)What is the correlation among the five factors that influence their intercultural sensitivity?3)Does it exist difference between male and female students in level of intercultural sensitivity?If the answer is yes,then what is the difference?The gathered statistics shows that the vocational college non-English majors'level of intercultural sensitivity is above average level slightly,and the interaction enjoyment gets the highest score among the five factors of intercultural sensitivity,while the interaction confidence gets the lowest score.As for the relationship among these five factors,they are positively related.And the relationship between interaction engagement and respect for cultural differences is the strongest.When it comes to whether or not the gender influences these participants'level of intercultural sensitivity,the analyzed figures present no obvious difference between male students and female students.Based on the analysis and discussion of the three questions above,the author offers some suggestions to learners to improve their intercultural communication and promote vocational English teaching.The pedagogical implications are listed in three aspects:curriculum design,teachers and students.However,the samples are too small and only students' factor is discussed in this study.Based on the deficiencies of the study,the author hopes that it can be optimized in further study.