A Study Of Effects Of Blended Learning Approach On Chinese College Students' Intercultural Communication Competence

The initiation of "the Belt and Road" national initiative in China and the internationalization trend of higher education have brought higher requirements of the intercultural communication competence(ICC)of Chinese college students.Therefore,the implementation effects of intercultural communication(IC)courses need to be studied and improved.As a new teaching method which integrates traditional face-to-face teaching and online education,blended learning approach has aroused great interest among scholars and educators both in China and abroad.The present research attempts to introduce blended learning approach into IC course in Chinese colleges,with the aim of exploring the effects of blended learning approach in developing Chinese college students' ICC.Based on the review of the related studies at home and abroad,the present researcher has addressed two specific research questions as follows:1.Is there any significant difference in the ICC development of the college students who receive traditional way of teaching and the college students who are exposed to blended learning approach in IC course?2.What are the college students' perceptions on employing blended learning approach to develop their ICC?The present researcher conducted an interventional experiment in a 211 university in East China by means of comparing Experimental Group(majoring in mass media)and Control Group(majoring in teaching Chinese as a foreign language),and totally 89 sophomores were involved.The interventional experiment lasted fourteen weeks for one semester.Experimental Group took the IC course designed on the basis of blended learning approach,while Control Group was treated with traditional face-to-face teaching mode.Quantitative data was collected by ICC questionnaires and then analyzed with independent and paired sample T test and DID algorithm by SPSS 21.And qualitative data was also gathered,including face-to-face interviews and case documents,and was analyzed after coding and categorizing.Based on the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data,the present researcher summarized the major findings as follows:1.The effects of blended learning approach on developing the participants' ICC:1)Blended learning approach was effective in improving college students' ICC in all the six dimensions.Among them,the most prominent achievement was found in"knowledge" dimension,followed by "skills","awareness","speculating" and"attitude" dimension,and finally it had the smallest effect in "strategy" dimension;2)Experimental Group scored higher than Control Group in questionnaires.However,statistically there was no significant differencec between the two groups,possibly due to the short course duration and the small sample size;2.The participants' perceptions on using blended learning approach to improve ICC:1)The participants in Experimental Group admitted that the "reflection" part is the most effective online activity in the course,in that it could enhance their memory of the course content,promote in-depth thinking and stimulate learning interest,and consequently facilitate the development of ICC..And the "question" part still needs to be improved,because it had become formalistic since the participants were not able to raise valuable questions;2)The results of qualitative data analysis also implied that blended learning approach was effective in promoting the learning motivation of the learners in this course,improving their autonomous learning ability and enhancing their higher-order thinking ability,which benefits the development of ICC.The present research provided some implications for the application of blended learning in intercultural communication course.On the one hand,the present research validated the effectiveness of adopting blended learning approach to improve the ICC of Chinese college students;on the other hand,it investigated the perceptions of Chinese college students on adopting blended learning approach to improve their ICC,and put forward some methods to improve the course based on the participants' feedback.