Studies On Theme-Based Intercultural English Teaching-With Wuxi Vocational School As The Case

English plays an important role in international communication.In order to meet the needs of future employment,vocational school students have to master English as a tool language.For effective intercultural communication,language competence only is far from enough because the intercultural competence is also important.Therefore,English teachers in vocational schools must combine language teaching with cultural teaching so as to cultivate intercultural competence in students.This study begins with questionnaires to investigate students' willingness to acquire intercultural knowledge.Accordingly,theme-based intercultural English teaching(hereafter referred to as TBIET)was designed to explore the influence of this teaching model on the intercultural competence training in vocational school studentsThis study is based on the Theory of Intercultural Communication and the Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity(DMIS)as the theoretical framework,and takes the vocational school students in author's school as the objects.Firstly,questionnaires were adopted to investigate students' willingness to learn intercultural knowledge.Then,a theme-based intercultural English teaching experiment was carried out and the data were collected in order to understand the impact on the cultivation of students' intercultural competence.Finally,some students were interviewed to show their attitude towards intercultural teaching.The study reached the following conclusions:1)Vocational school students have a certain willingness to learn intercultural knowledge,but the degree is not high.2)Theme-based intercultural teaching is helpful to cultivate intercultural competence in vocational students,and the effect is quite significant.3)Students have great interest in intercultural knowledge learning.They welcome the Theme-based intercultural teaching model,but also expect more interesting teaching methods in intercultural knowledge teaching.Due to the limitation in the author's own ability,this study still has some shortcomings.For example,the teaching arrangements are not systematic enough,the sample size is too small,the evaluation process is not rigorous enough and so on.In the future,the author will continue to study the theory of intercultural communication,try to improve teaching methods,increase the sample of research,and modify the evaluation process with classroom observation and cultural test to explore effective teaching methods that can cultivate students' intercultural competence.