A Research On College EFL Teachers' Cultural Identity And Intercultural Knowledge Level

It is well known that cultural identity plays an important role in intercultural communication, and intercultural knowledge is an essential and indispensible part of intercultural communication competence (ICC) which has become one of the most important goals in foreign language teaching (FLT). In order to help students enhance their understanding of cultural identity and cultivate their ICC, EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers'cultural identity and their intercultural knowledge level are of first importance.According to some researches, foreign language learners have dual cultural identity: native cultural identity and target cultural identity. Have EFL teachers noticed their dual cultural identity? Can they take advantage of their easy access to both languages and cultures to be cultural mediators: the maintainer of Chinese culture and the transmitter of foreign culture?In FLT, teachers'dual cultural identity demands their large familiarity with intercultural knowledge, namely foreign culture and Chinese culture. Then what is the current level of their familiarity with intercultural knowledge? Have such factors as"age","sex","years of teaching","professional title","record of formal schooling","teaching English majors or not", and"participation in IC training/course or not"influenced their intercultural knowledge level?In order to find out answers to these questions, this thesis surveyed 65 EFL teachers from CDUT by the means of questionnaire, and then the data is analyzed by SPSS 13.0. The research findings indicate that most of EFL teachers perceive that they have dual cultural identity and are quite willing to be cultural mediators: the transmitter of foreign culture and the maintainer of Chinese culture; the level of their familiarity with intercultural knowledge is high; factors such as"sex","teaching English majors or not"and"participation in IC training/course or not"have great influence on the level of their familiarity with intercultural knowledge, but there is no correlation between factors like"age","years of teaching","record of formal schooling","professional title"and their intercultural knowledge level. Quite interestingly, those middle-aged teachers who are lecturers and have M.A degrees are more familiar with intercultural knowledge than other teachers.These findings highlight the importance of intercultural training which has a great potential to be applied to college EFL teachers'education. This research needs further improvement for the limitation of its small-scaled subjects.