Assessment And Study Of English Major's Intercultural Sensitivity

Intercultural communication competence (ICC) is the ability to communicate appropriately and effectively with people of different cultural backgrounds, which is also the ultimate goal of learning a foreign language. Among the researches concerning ICC made by scholars at home, topics like understanding or cultivating ICC have attracted much attention, while intercultural assessment - measuring the learner's status quo of ICC - is under-explored, which may endeavor ICC training suffer from low-efficiency and aimlessness.This thesis aims at assessing the intercultural sensitivity (ICS), an important component of ICC, of college English majors, to find out their performance in the affective aspect of ICC, such as Interaction Engagement, Interaction Confidence, Interaction Attentiveness, Respect for Cultural Difference, etc.. The results indicate that the students' general ICS is good, with "Respect for Cultural Difference" getting the highest score and "Interaction Confidence" the lowest. Based on the findings, suggestions are made on how to develop student's ICS, hence improving their total ICC.The study provides first-hand information on the status quo of the ICS of college English majors in China, which can be of some reference for educators in planning intercultural training curriculum, choosing teaching methodology and material based on students' situation. In addition, the theoretical and empirical explorations made in the thesis on intercultural sensitivity assessment can also provide some food for future study.