An Empirical Study On The Cultivation Of Intercultural Communication Competence Of Senior High Students In ELT

Under the economic globalization,foreign language learning is increasingly important.Therefore,the traditional English education that focuses on knowledge and skills is not suitable for current conditions.Both China's current development strategy and New National English Curriculum Standards state that the essence of English language teaching is the cultivation of people's intercultural communication competence.It will cause errors or misunderstandings if one does not have intercultural communication competence in the process of interacting with others.The improvement of intercultural communication competence can help people avoid this situation which is supported by many scholars.On the basis of theory of intercultural awareness and intercultural communication competence,this thesis studies how to cultivate students' intercultural communication competence and puts forward two questions: 1)Can students' intercultural communication competence be improved through contrast approach and experiential approach after the empirical experiment? 2)Can students make progress in English language proficiency if their intercultural communication competence is improved?Two classes are chosen from grade two of senior high school.The two classes are regarded as experimental class and controlled class respectively.Two instruments--English papers and questionnaires are applied to check students' English language proficiency and intercultural communication competence.Through the discussions of the results of the statistics before and after the experiment,the thesis draws two conclusions that students' intercultural communication competence can be improved and at the same time students' English language proficiency is improved accompanied with the improvement of their intercultural communication competence.This thesis verifies that students' intercultural communication competence is crucial for their language learning and also this competence can be improved under proper guidance.Therefore,there are practical meanings for studying this topic.At the same time,it still takes time to explore which method is the most efficient one for the teaching.