An Experimental Study On Application Of Practical Teaching Circular Model Of ICC In Senior High School English Reading Teaching

With the globalization of economy,technology and culture,more people around the world need to conduct intercultural communication than ever before.Intercultural communicative competence,which refers to the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations based on one's intercultural knowledge,skills,and attitudes(Deardorff,2006),becomes more and more significant.As cultural awareness,one aspect of core competencies,is put forward by the ministry of education,more emphasis is put on culture education in practical English teaching in senior high school.Therefore,intercultural communicative competence becomes an essential ability for senior high school students in this new century.However,the current situation of cultural teaching in practice is not optimistic,so is senior high school students' intercultural communicative competence.Therefore,it is of great significance to find a better way to foster senior high school students' intercultural communicative competence.This thesis aims to find out whether the practical teaching circular model of ICC which is put forward by Gu Xiaole in Foreign Language World in 2017 can cultivate students' intercultural communicative competence better than traditional teaching methods.The investigation was conducted among 107 students of senior one in a senior high school in Hebei.The 55 subjects in the experimental class went through a treatment of about 5-month English reading teaching under the guidance of the practical teaching circular model of ICC.After the experiment,the results of students' intercultural communicative competence in pretest and post-test were compared from three aspects of ICC,namely,intercultural awareness,intercultural sensitivity and intercultural effectiveness.Instruments adopted were test paper of intercultural awareness,intercultural sensitivity scale,intercultural effectiveness scale and students' journals.Quantitative and qualitative data-analysis were both used.The results revealed that the practical teaching circular model of ICC had positive effects on senior high school students' intercultural communicative competence.Specifically,in terms of intercultural awareness,this model had significant effects on students' “general consideration” and “command of etiquette”.In regard to intercultural sensitivity,subjects' “interaction confidence”,“interaction engagement” and “respect for cultural differences” were improved significantly.The components “behavioral flexibility”,“identity maintenance”,“interaction relaxation” and “interactant respect”,of intercultural effectiveness were improved significantly.The findings of the current study give implications for the educators that the practical teaching circular model of ICC is of great significance in fostering students' intercultural communicative competence.It provides a reference for the intercultural teaching of English in the basic education stage.