A Survey Of Senior High School Students’ Intercultural Communication Competence

The development of globalization has led to the closer contact between China and foreign countries.With the globalization of economy and education,cultural exchanges between China and the world are more frequent.Language,culture and communication are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.Language teaching cannot be independent of culture and communication,which determines the importance of the cultivating students’ intercultural communication competence(ICC)in English teaching.In 2017,the Ministry of Education of China promulgated the National English Curriculum Standards of Senior High School,which clearly proposed and emphasized cultural awareness,and pointed out the importance of ICC.Therefore,English teaching should not only cultivate students’ basic language skills and language knowledge points,but also cultivate students’ ICC.According to the ICC model proposed by Byram in 1997,the thesis is aim to addressing the following research questions:1.What is the current state of ICC of senior high school students?2.What are the hidden reasons accounting for the current state of ICC of senior high school students?This thesis mainly investigates the ICC of senior high school students from three aspects: intercultural knowledge,intercultural behavior and intercultural awareness.Based on the research of students’ ICC,the reasons for that are studied.The methods involved in this thesis are test,interview and classroom observation.The three ICC tests are used to investigate the ICC of high school students,and about 90 students participate in the survey.The interviews try to understand the hidden reasons for the students’ ICC,according to the interview of ten teachers and ten students.Based on the data from the research,the findings are as follows.First,the level of senior high school students’ ICC is low and unbalanced in general.Students’ intercultural awareness is at a good level,and their performance of intercultural behavior has also improved slightly,but intercultural knowledge is still in a poor state.Second,the reasons for students’ low level of ICC are analyzed from teachers’ perspective and students’ perspective.From teachers’ perspective,the teachers’ own level of ICC is low,and they lack the awareness and performance of cultivating students’ ICC in English teaching.From students’ perspective,students do not cultivate and improve their own ICC consciously,and they have not expanded their ways to cultivate ICC.The research results manifest the current situation of students’ ICC in senior high school and the hidden reasons accounting for that.Based on the research results,the thesis puts forward several practical suggestions for students’ intercultural knowledge,intercultural behavior and intercultural awareness.