Relation Of Chinese Graduate Students'Levels Of Intercultural Interaction To Intercultural Sensitivity

In recent years,internationalization of higher education makes it possible,convenient and economical for domestic students to get access to more and more international students with different cultural backgrounds without going abroad.However,whether domestic students can benefit from internationalization of campuses has remained to be studied.From the perspective of Internationalization at home,an online questionnaire was administered to examine Chinese graduate students' current level of intercultural interaction(ICI)and level of intercultural sensitivity(ICS)in Jiangsu University,the research site.Then statistic software SPSS22.0 was used to examine if certain correlations exist between the two constructs.Finally,an in-depth interview was conducted to further explore the association of graduate students' intercultural interactions with their intercultural sensitivity by selecting 6 graduate students from the high-ICI-score group and the low-ICI-score group respectively in order to triangulate quantitative results.Results show that the overall level of graduate students' intercultural interaction is slightly low,and there are significant differences among the high-,intermediate-,and low-ICI-score groups.Graduate students' overall level of intercultural sensitivity is slightly above the intermediate level.Overall,graduate students' level of intercultural interaction has a positive and significant correlation with the level of intercultural sensitivity.Meanwhile,significant differences are found between the level of ICS of high-ICI-score group and those of low-or intermediate-ICI-score groups,but no difference is found between the level of ICS of low-ICI-score group and that of intermediate-ICI-score group.In terms of the five dimensions of ICS,the levels of Interaction Confidence,Interaction Attentiveness and Interaction Engagement have significantly positive correlations with the level of ICI;while Respect for Cultural Difference and Interaction Enjoyment have no correlation with it.The study has its theoretical,practical,and pedagogical significance.From the perspective of Internationalization at home(IaH),the current study enriches and adds to the literature by informing educators and faculty of developing graduate students' intercultural sensitivity and intercultural competence by benefiting from multicultural experiences and interactions in the internationalized university campus.Also,graduate students themselves need to embrace the benefits and challenges arising from intercultural interactions with international students.