A Study of Non-English Majors Cultivation of Intercultural Communicative Competence in China——A Cas

论文总字数：43483字

摘 要

对于非英语专业学生来说，阅读课是课程设置中十分重要的一门课。在阅读教学中不仅要传授他们专业知识，更应当逐渐引导他们自主培养跨文化意识，增强其文化敏感性，并最终提高其跨文化交际能力。

本研究通过问卷及社会文化测试，试图了解大学英语阅读教学现状，非英语专业学生对于文化教学的看法，以及他们的跨文化交际能力水平。问卷及测试卷的结果表明，尽管学生及老师均了解跨文化交际能力的重要性，但大学英语阅读教学中仍存在不足；学生的文化知识水平依然不尽人意，学生还未真正具备成熟的跨文化交际意识与能力。据此，本研究最后提出了英语阅读教学中培养大学生跨文化交际能力的有效对策。

关键词：跨文化交际能力；英语阅读教学；非英语专业大学生

Table of Content

Acknowledgements i

Abstract ii

摘要 iii

Table of Content iv

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Research Objectives 2

1.3 Research Significance 2

Chapter 2 Literature Review 4

2.1 Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) 4

2.2 Present Situation of English Reading Teaching in China 5

Chapter 3 Research Method 8

3.1 Questionnaire 8

3.1.1 Objectives 8

3.1.2 Subjects 8

3.1.3 Questionnaire Design 9

3.2 A Socio-cultural test 9

3.2.1 Objectives 9

3.2.2 Participants 10

3.2.3 Test Design 10

Chapter 4 Research Findings and Discussion 11

4.1 Data Collection and Analysis of Questionnaire 11

4.2 Data Collection and Analysis of Socio-cultural Test 16

Chapter 5 Conclusion 17

5.1 Summary 17

5.2 Pedagogical Implications 17

References 19

Appendix I: Questionnaire 21

Appendix II: A Social-cultural Test 24

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

In recent years, intercultural communication has become a hot topic of China's foreign language study. In fact, the rise and development of this subject do not have tight link to foreign language education, but its influence spreads to foreign language education. Moreover, the subject it involves had aroused the great attention of the whole foreign language education. The subject sprang up in recent decades and draws more and more attention of scholars. This kind of phenomenon, of course, is directly related to the dramatic change of international situation in recent years.

Broadly, there are several factors contributing to and developing the research of intercultural communication. The first is the development of modern technology, especially the improvement of communication technology. The next one is the development of transportation technology. The birth of the multimedia is the third cause. Last but not least, today’s highly globalized economy is the critical factor, in that international business activities midwife the necessity of intercultural communication. These changes have resulted in global tightening of time and space, and brought global consciousness for all mankind. People in different places, from different cultural background created strong desire to contact with each other. In the modern society where cultures are interweaved and changeable, people strongly hope to be good at cross-cultural communication.

In the era of globalization, intercultural communicative competence is playing an increasingly important role in international communication. Higher education is a crucial part of national education, which shoulders the significant task of cultivating applied talents for the country. In Chinese colleges, non-English majors are in the majority of English learners. In the curriculum, the subject of reading is very important. Therefore, under the background of era, teachers should not only teach non-English majors subject knowledge, but also improve their competence of cross-cultural communication.

1.2 Research Objectives

The research attempts to survey the current state of the teaching of culture to non-English majors. The author tries to find out students’ opinion on the importance of culture teaching and their suggestions on teachers’ teaching of foreign culture, to reveal the shortcomings in the course of college English reading and put forward effective countermeasures to foster non-English majors' intercultural communicative competence in English reading teaching.

1.3 Research Significance

Famous scholar McLuhan（1967） once used terms--"Global Village" to describe the modern world which is becoming smaller and smaller. It is so tight in time and space upon earth today that we produce the sense of studying intercultural communication - this is the responsibility the era have entrusted to us.

Low efficiency of exchange and communication, the misunderstanding between people from different cultures, and other communication disorders may result in cultural conflicts, psychological barriers, and even endless disasters. Cultural differences will bring people of different cultural backgrounds great difficulties understanding and getting along with each other. As a result, people might feel worried, depressed, or incredibly stressed. Obviously, to understand the essence and process of intercultural communication and to explore what and how happened in the process is the pressing demand of the time—intercultural communication is extremely urgent.

This mindset is the strong driving force to push the rise and development of intercultural communication research. What's more, to master cross-cultural competence can also help people compare different cultures, and improve their own self-awareness, prompting people to rethink their culture. In the psychological sense, the competence and knowledge can also make people find new pleasure and satisfaction. Of course, intercultural competence can also help people predict communicative behaviors of people from different cultures as well as solve the problems produced in communication.

In foreign language education, there is a greater power to promote cross-cultural communication research. The power is that the masses of teachers and students realize the language education has been far from enough to meet their requirements. Intercultural communicative competence is the ultimate aim of foreign language education. Furthermore, language education should be cultural education to a great extent.

Many scholars have realized that we need theoretical guidance in cross-cultural communication, that is, a kind of theory which can provide foreign language teaching a large number of facts of intercultural differences, improve students' sensitivity of the cultural differences, and guide people to analyze and interpret differences in communication.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC)

When people from different cultural backgrounds get into touch with each other, intercultural communication occurs. Intercultural communication is a sort of social and cultural behavior, which not only involves cultural factors, but also refers to different social factors. Generally speaking, intercultural communication is the communication between members of different cultures. Intercultural communication competence (ICC) itself is a very complicated issue. The discussion about the definition and content of ICC has lasted for over half a century, and it’s quite difficult to give a universally-adopted definition of ICC. Many researchers have their own explanation to ICC.

Byram (1997) points out that there are four components of ICC：

1. Attitudes of curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own;

2) Knowledge of social groups and their practices and products;

3) Two skills: skills of interpreting and relating (competence to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents from one's own) and skills of discovery and interaction (competence to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the competence to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of communication and interaction)

4) Critical cultural awareness (an competence to evaluate critically and on the basis of explicit criteria perspectives, practices and products in one's own and other countries' cultures.)

According to Xiao (2010), there are four dimensions of ICC：

1) Awareness includes intercultural awareness, cultural awareness, critical cultural awareness and developing ethnorelativism and a sense of pride toward one's native culture;

2) Attitude refers to having an open mind, avoiding ethnocentrism and stereotypes and developing empathy toward the foreign culture;

3) Knowledge comprises knowledge of both the target culture and one's native culture, verbal and non-verbal knowledge and the general rule of intercultural communication;

4) Skills refer to adopting appropriate communicative strategies to make the communication successful and effective.

Therefore, a qualified intercultural communicator should have intercultural and critical cultural awareness, open and positive attitude, ample culture knowledge, and skills to adopt suitable communicative strategies.

Researchers started to recognize the necessity of developing learner’s ICC since the early 1980s. At that time, people generally realize the importance of communication in language teaching. Plenty of papers, works and books related to ICC have been published since then, such as Intercultural Communication and English Learning (Hu, 1988), Intercultural Communication (Guam 1995), Foreign Language Teaching and Culture (Hu, et al, 1997), etc.

Although scholars still have different opinions on the definition and content of ICC, they have reached an agreement that ICC is fundamental goal of FLT.

2.2 Present Study of English Reading Teaching in China

During the 1970s and 1980s, the communicative teaching approach started to be introduced to China. The research on incorporating culture teaching into language teaching had been paid more and more attention. The teaching of socio-cultural rules for language use became an crucial part of language teaching rather than an added cultural element.

A great deal of books and articles was published relating some western approaches to culture teaching since then. Guozhang Xu(1980)'s article "Culturally-loaded words and English language teaching” is the sign of intercultural communication’s birth in China. The relationship between the cultural connotation of words and English teaching has been discussed in this article. After him, many articles and books in this field rocketed within the following years. For example, Some well-known Chinese scholars like Wenzhong Hu(1994), Yuxin Jia(1997), Yihong Gao(2001, 2002), Jiazu Gu(2002) and Hongfing Zhang (2001，2004, 2007, 2010) focus their research on culture teaching in Chinese colleges. Many articles and papers on remarkable influence that target culture has on intercultural communication were written by these scholars. Wenzhong Hu (1994) focuses his attention on introducing new ideas and concepts of intercultural communication and culture teaching from other foreign countries. He makes a comprehensive description about the relationship between language and culture, why, what and how we should teach culture in FLT. His study leaves a strong foundation to culture teaching in China. Hongfing Zhang(2007) has made a great contribution in study the huge potential of FLT in developing intercultural competence of the college students. She makes a good effort in connecting intercultural communication with foreign language teaching, which is has vital practical meaning to English teaching in China.

According to these discussions, it’s clear that to incorporate culture into language teaching has gained many scholars and researchers’ attention. The theoretical study has made major strides, however, culture teaching in teaching practice still has some drawbacks. It’s very necessary to help people to be increasingly aware that language learning is culture learning and that cultural competence is a crucial component of intercultural communicative competence.

Nowadays, In the English reading class, grammar-translation method is favored by teachers. As the name suggests, in grammar–translation classes, students learn grammatical rules and then apply those rules by translating sentences between the target language and the source language. However, the drawback is clear: because speaking or any kind of spontaneous creative output was missing from the curriculum, students would often fail at speaking or even letter writing in the target language. What’s more, students will know little about the culture of the target language. Although the English teaching method has been improved in recent years, a large proportion of teachers still use grammar-translation method in their class. The high percentage is the major cause of students’ poor English abilities. In addition, teachers’ limited teaching capacity, short class time, too large class size, as well as the test pressure make it difficult to carry out culture teaching effectively.

In general, the traditional teaching based on grammar-translation method is as follows: First of all, the teacher will choose some words and phrases from the text and explain the implications by some examples. Then, the teacher will read and explain the text one sentence after one sentence. The complex grammatical structure will be emphasized and the teacher will ask the students to conclude the passage by their own words. At last, it’s time for exercise. These exercises are usually multiple choice or essay questions related to the text. On account of this kind of teaching method, many students give vocabulary and grammar priority. These students believe that if they master enough vocabulary and grammar rules, they will learn the language well. As a result, it’s common to see that students always memorize grammar rules and CET4/6 vocabulary mechanically. In this way, it’s hard to enhance students’ intercultural communicative competence and may have negative influence on their intercultural communication enthusiasm. For instance, this method will trim students’ appetite to develop their intercultural communicative competence.

The goal of reading instruction is supposed to improve students’ ICC in the process of language learning. Nevertheless, we find that teachers spend more time in explaining vocabulary and grammar. Such a learning model overestimates language knowledge but ignores the significance of communication. Limited communication competence is always the huge barrier in cross-cultural communication, in that cultural errors, which might be worth than language errors, even cause cultural conflict. Reading books with rich materials can be used effectively to play the role of cultural bridge between students and the culture of target language. Teachers should strengthen students’ reading, speaking and writing abilities as well as their cultural knowledge, so that the students can successfully communicate with people of English-speaking countries.

Chapter 3 Research Method

This chapter introduces questionnaire and socio-cultural test, which respectively aims at surveying non-English majors’ perceptions on current culture teaching and examining their intercultural communicative competence.

3.1 Questionnaire

3.1.1 Objectives

The questionnaire aims at investigating the students’ opinions on culture teaching and the present situation of culture teaching. The author tries to find out students’ opinions on the importance of culture teaching and their suggestions on teachers’ teaching of foreign culture.

3.1.2 Subjects

The subjects involved are 60 non-English majors from 9 different faculties in Southeast University. They are chosen randomly and most of them have learned English for at least 8 years. Detailed information is shown in Table 3-1.

Table 3-1 Information about the subjects

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