A Study On Intercultural Communication Competence Of Senior High School English Teachers In Huanggang City

It has been widely approved that one of the ultimate goals of foreign language teaching is to cultivate students to be successful intercultural communicators.With the new National English Curriculum Standard for General High School issued by the Ministry of Education in 2017,newer and higher requirements are put forward for the cultivation of intercultural communication competence of senior high school students.The studies on intercultural communication competence of senior high school students have received more extensive attention.However,many scholars have just focused their studies on students,exploring the current situation of intercultural communication competence from the perspective of students.Few studies are conducted on intercultural communication competence of teachers,especially on intercultural communication competence of senior high school English teachers.According to Byram(1997),a well-known sociolinguist,intercultural communication competence is mainly consisted of four aspects: intercultural knowledge,skills,awareness and attitudes.Basing on the Byram's model,this study makes a survey of intercultural communication competence of 120 senior high school English teachers in Huanggang,Hubei province,and explores the level of their intercultural communication competence from the above four aspects.This study mainly probes into the following three questions: 1.what is the current situation of intercultural communication competence of senior high school English teachers in Huanggang? 2.what are the main factors that affect intercultural communication competence of senior high school English teachers in Huanggang? 3.what are the causes for the current situation of intercultural communication competence of senior high school English teachers in Huanggang?Two kinds of research methods,questionnaires and interviews,are adopted in this study.In addition to Byram's intercultural communication competence model,the questionnaire also refers to the self-evaluation scale of intercultural communication competence constructed by Zhong Hua,Bai Qianhui and Fan Weiwei(2013),which is suitable for the field of foreign language education.The interviews are conducted with English teachers on the basis of random sampling.Based on the data collected from the questionnaires and interviews,the major findings can be summarized as follows:Firstly,the overall current situation of the participants' intercultural communication competence is unsatisfactory,which means that there is still a lot of room for improvement.There is imbalanced development in the four aspects of intercultural knowledge,skills,awareness and attitudes.According to the results of the questionnaire test,although the participants' scores in intercultural awareness and attitudes are acceptable,the scores in intercultural knowledge and skills are low.Secondly,factors such as gender differences,years of English teaching,academic qualifications,intercultural communication competence training and overseas studying experiences all have a direct influence on the intercultural communication competence of the participants.According to the survey,only professional titles are not directly related to the participants' intercultural communication competence.Thirdly,this study finds that the participants believe that the main reason for their weak intercultural communication competence is due to the exam-oriented English teaching environment in senior high schools.In order to help students get high marks in exams,English teachers pay most of their attention to language teaching but ignore culture teaching.What's more,there are no specific requirements for their intercultural communication competence in the new National English Curriculum Standard for General High School,no professional guidance and no concrete demands of intercultural communication competence in the evaluation system,which result in the lack of needs and motivation for the participants to enhance their intercultural communication competence.Based on the findings,the study points out that it's urgent for senior high school English teachers to improve their intercultural communication competence.Some implications are also put forward on how to improve intercultural communication competence of senior high school English teachers: First,English teachers should realize the necessity and significance of increasing their intercultural communication competence.Second,the government and the schools should take some effective measures to help English teachers to raise their intercultural communication competence.Third,English teachers should renew their foreign language teaching ideas,strengthen their intercultural communication competence and redefine their roles in classroom.