A Study On Intercultural Sensitivity Of University Exchange Students

In today’s era of globalization, cross-cultural communication in terms of breadth and depth is constantly expanding, more and more people pay attention to improving their intercultural communication competence. Intercultural communicative competence refers to the ability of a person to communicate successfully in different cultural background, which includes cognitive, emotional and behavioral aspects.Intercultural sensitivity is an emotional part of intercultural communicative competence,which inspires people to understand and be able to appreciate and accept all kinds of cultural differences. Intercultural Sensitivity directly affects the level of a person’s intercultural communication.This study is based on some related researches made by Chen & Starasta and adopts 116 UES(University Exchange Students) of three universities(Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an Polytechnic University, Northwest University) who are preparing for studying overseas as subjects to conduct the survey of the intercultural sensitivity. In the study, the author employs quantitative, qualitative and comparative methods and adopts the measurement of Chen& Starosta’s Intercultural Sensitivity Scale(ISS). In the survey,the questionnaire contains five items of 24 questions to test five aspects of intercultural sensitivity of the subjects such as Respect for Culture Difference, Interaction Engagement, Interaction Confidence, Interaction Enjoyment, and Interaction Attentiveness. The author uses SPSS 17.0 to analyze the data of the survey. At the same time, the author conducts interview one for 10 University exchange students(UES) who are going to foreign countries to study for a period of time and interview two for UES who are studying overseas and then compares the differences between the two interviews.The results of the study show that intercultural sensitivity of university exchange students is generally medium. Among the five aspects, interaction engagement is strongest, and interaction enjoyment is weakest. The study reveals that interaction enjoyment is the influential factor which leads to the present medium level. The main reasons are stereotyping, ethnocentrism, lack of confidence, lack of self-awareness, lack of culture awareness, lack of culture-Learning.According to the results of the study, the author offers some suggestions for UES to improve their ICS in order to communicate smoothly and appropriately with counterparts in intercultural communication. This study also provides some feasible recommendations for university English teachers on intercultural teaching and simultaneously for university students on how to improve their intercultural communication competence(ICC).