A Study On Intercultural Sensitivity Of Senior High School Students

With the development of globalization,people need to communicate with those from different cultures.The significance of intercultural communicative competence is increasingly significant.The National English Curriculum Standard for General High School(2017)defines cultural awareness as one basic element of core competence,and requires that senior English course should help students develop their intercultural communicative competence,and establish a sense of community of shared future for mankind and multicultural awareness.As an essential element of intercultural communicative competence,intercultural sensitivity is a kind of individual's subjective attitude,which helps the individual to stimulate his or her own understanding,appreciation and acceptance of cultural differences,and the ability of an individual to produce positive emotional tendencies when facing cultural differences.Such positive emotional tendencies will facilitate effective and appropriate intercultural communication.Thus,the cultivation of intercultural sensitivity cannot be neglected.Among a large number of studies on intercultural sensitivity,most of which focus on college students and adults.Only few researches have been carried out on high school students.Based on the intercultural communicative competence theories made by Chen and Starosta,this study chooses 452 senior students of grade 2 in a key high school located in Chongqing as the subjects to investigate their intercultural sensitivity,which may provide some helpful hints for present English teaching.It aims at getting insight into the overallsituation of senior high school students' intercultural sensitivity,the correlations among four internal factors of intercultural sensitivity,and the variables which exert effects on students' intercultural sensitivity.Additionally,this study applies qualitative and quantitative research methods,chooses Chinese Intercultural Sensitivity Inventory adapted by Huang Wenhong as the questionnaire,collects and analyzes data by excel and SPSS 23.0,and interviews 5 teachers and 30 students.The results show that the overall intercultural sensitivity of high school students is at a medium level.They gain the highest score in the factor of respect for cultural differences,and gain the lowest score in the factor of interaction confidence.Among the four factors,open-mindedness has strong positive correlation with interaction confidence,and has the moderate correlation with empathy and respect for cultural differences.Empathy has moderate correlation with interaction confidence and respect for cultural differences,while the correlation between interaction confidence and respect for cultural differences is the weakest.In addition,this study also explores the influence of different variables on high school students' intercultural sensitivity,with the result that performance in classroom,overseas experience,types of class,and subjects could affect students' intercultural sensitivity,among which the most influential variables are performance in classroom and overseas experience.Accordingly,based on findings of this study,the theory of DMIS and findings of the previous studies,this study offers some feasible suggestions of developing high school students' intercultural sensitivity.