A Study Of Developing College Students' Intercultural Communication Competence In College English Reading Courses

Intercultural communication competence (ICC), as one of the key elements in English teaching and learning has been widely discussed in Western countries and in China from different perspectives. It is Hymes who first introduces and attaches great importance to the social involvement of ICC. Besides linguistic and pragmatic competences, Hu Wenzhong maintains that ICC also involves understanding cultures deeply rooted in English speaking countries. (胡,高,1997) Up till now, no consensus has been reached as to the implications and components of ICC. By utilizing different scholars'researches, the author presents her own understanding of ICC, and applies it to College English reading courses.All college non-English majors are required to learn English for at least two years, and reading courses account for a considerable percentage of the total courses offered. It is very important to probe into students'intercultural awareness in order to help them to broaden their horizons and learn about different cultures of English speaking countries, and to develop their ICC.Involved in the study were 166 subjects from the second year college non-English majors in Suzhou Institute of Science and Technology. In the study students were asked to gather cultural information, and share their cultural perceptions. Later they were tested to determine how effective these efforts were. Twelve of them were interviewed to clarify some basic information about the cultural perceptions. Both the testing and interviews are aimed at finding out the extent to which college non-English majors are aware of ICC. The elements involved in ICC are focused on and reading problems encountered by students unfamiliar with the target language culture are described and discussed. Suggestions to remedy the problems are put forward. The major results can be summarized as follows:1. Culture teaching and learning in College English reading courses remain limited, due to the traditional practice of giving top priority to linguistic competence and to the well-known fact that College English teaching is often test-oriented. For instance, in CET- Band 4 and Band 6, cultural information is rarely dealt with in...