| It has been undoubtedly known that English has been the most widely used language in the world presently. With the more frequent intercultural communications being carried out nowadays among different countries, a lot of researchers share the same idea that the final goal of English teaching is to be the cultivation of intercultural communication competence while intercultural communication sensitivity and intercultural communication competence have positive correlation with each other. Furthermore, intercultural communication sensitivity is an important dimension of intercultural communication competence.The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of English-culture teaching for promoting the level of intercultural sensitivity of college students. That is whether English-culture teaching in English language teaching is feasible in practice to improve students’intercultural communication sensitivity level? Based on the previous studies, the author conducted an investigation among 136 non English majors from a university, intending to explore the influence of English-Culture teaching on intercultural sensitivity of Chinese College non-English majors. The instrument to quantify the levels of intercultural communication sensitivity was the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale designed by Chen and Starosta on the basis of their theories of intercultural communication sensitivity. The test group received a treatment of sixteen-week English course with English culture contained. The statistical data was analyzed by the independent samples T-test, using SPSS 17.0. In addition, a questionnaire designed by the author was employed to display subjects’ responses to the relative English-culture learning for the semester.The major findings indicated that English-culture teaching in ELT led to significant enhancement in the participants’ ICS level, in every factor of the ISS, including interaction engagement, respect for cultural difference, interaction confidence, interaction enjoyment, interaction attentiveness. English-culture teaching can promote students’ intercultural sensitivity if the teachers pay attention to the cultivation of the six components and five factors of the ISS in their English teaching process. Furthermore, positive responses to the questionnaire exposed the participants’ welcome to English-culture teaching in ELT and their improvements after the present study. Feasible recommendations were also given concerning the materials and pedagogy of English-culture teaching in ELT. |
