A Comparative Study Of Intercultural Sensitivity Between Mainland Students And Students From Hong Kong, Macau And Taiwan At Jinan University

As an important component of intercultural communication competence (ICC), enhanced intercultural sensitivity (ICS) plays a critical role in successful intercultural communication. Therefore, it is of great necessity to increase people's intercultural sensitivity in order to cultivate their intercultural communication competence.With the increase of students from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (HMT students) in the Mainland universities, foreign language teaching is meeting a new challenge. How to cultivate Mainland and HMT students' ICS and ICC has become an impending issue. The purpose of the study is to investigate the current situation of ICS of Mainland and HMT students at Jinan University, which is the university that enrolls the largest number of HMT students in Mainland China, so as to develop their ICS and ICC in an efficient way.Using the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) formulated by Chen and Starosta, the intercultural sensitivity of Mainland and HMT students at Jinan University were investigated and compared. In this study, intercultural sensitivity was conceptualized as consisting of five dimensions, namely, interaction engagement, respect for cultural differences, interaction confidence, interaction enjoyment, and interaction attentiveness. The results indicated that Mainland students had a significant higher level of intercultural sensitivity than HMT students. For the five dimensions of ICS, Mainland students showed significantly higher abilities at respect for cultural differences, interaction engagement and interaction enjoyment. In spite of these differences, two samples still showed some similar features in the five dimensions. Moreover, the results of multiple regressions found that similarities and differences of the deep structure of ICS existed between two samples. In addition, this study also found that both English proficiency and intercultural contact had positive significant effect on ICS. Through a follow-up interview, more insights and possible explanations for the results were obtained. According to the survey results, some tentative suggestions for cultivating Mainland and HMT students' ICS and ICC were proposed at last.This study provides new empirical data to enrich the research on intercultural sensitivity, and fills a gap in the research of HMT students' intercultural communication competence. The findings of the investigation will have an illuminative function in developing Mainland and HMT students' intercultural sensitivity and intercultural communication competence at Jinan University and other universities who enroll large number of HMT students in Mainland China.