A Study On The Cultivation Of Cultural Empathy Competence Of College Students In Intercultural Communication

The idea that social and cultural teaching is an indispensable part of foreign language teaching is widely accepted by the foreign language education.In addition to the general culture including verbal and non-verbal behaviors,social culture teaching also includes more in-depth formal culture such as politics,geography,history,and literature.However,for a long time,in addition to memorizing words,grammar and sentences,students' learning of cultures in different countries is limited,and they pay less attention to more detailed and specific formal culture.This causes students to have concision about different countries' cultures,resulting in lacking self-confidence in intercultural communication and affecting the smooth progress of intercultural communication.Cultural empathy is the most important component of the intercultural communication system.It is a key factor that directly affects the quality,effectiveness and progress of intercultural communication.Cultural empathy is a kind of psychological experience,emotional displacement and cognitive transformation in the intercultural communication in order to ensure the smooth communication between different cultures,which is based on an in-depth and multifaceted understanding of the culture of the comnunicative partner.In recent years,more and more foreign language teaching scholars and researchers have realized the importance and necessity of combining language teaching with cultural teaching,but most studies are focused on how to improve intercultural communication competence or cultural acquisition.Few people have refined intercultural communication skills into cultural empathy and combined it with the acquisition of social culture.Based on the relevant theories of intercultural communication,this thesis studies the cultural empathy and the actual situation of social culture acquisition of non-English majors,and on this basis puts forward suggestions for cultivating students' cultural empathy competence.The subject of the research is 142 non-English majors who are about to become sophomores from Northeast Forestry University.The main instruments are the intercultural sensitivity scale developed by Chen&Starosta,the social-culture test developed by Wang Zhenya,and the social science statistical software SPSS22.0.All the collected data are entered into the computer and analyzed by software.There are three research questions in this study:(1)What is the current status of college students' cultural empathy competence?(2)In the process of intercultural communication,what factors will affect college students' cultural empathy competence?(3)How to cultivate the cultural empathy competence of college students?Through data and other analytical studies,it is concluded that the cultivation of college students' cultural empathy competence should strengthen students' cultural sensitivity and cultural adaptability.Cultural empathy and social culture acquisition are mutually beneficial.The more social culture a person acquires in an English-speaking country,the more easily it is for him to improve his cultural empathy;the more a person has the higher the cultural empathy,the more easily it is for him to understand the social culture of an English-speaking country or region.This research may help teachers to know the acquisition of non-English majors' social culture and their cultural empathy,and find out the factors that influence their cultural empathy.In the classroom,it is possible for teachers to appropriately adjust the teaching methods and attach importance to the teaching of culture,so that students can gain confidence in English learning while maintaining the interest in studying English.And then a good English learning atmosphere can be formed,which can improve their intercultural communication competence while improving cultural empathy competence.