A Developmental Survey Study Of English Majors’ Intercultural Communicative Competence

According to the new curricula of FLT in China, the goal in FLT has shifted from focusing on foreign language learners’ linguistic competence, communicative competence to the cultivation of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), which is the ultimate goal of foreign language education. Over the last few decades, scholars with various specialties have examined ICC from their unique vantage. The wide range of the existing models and conceptualizations of ICC encompassed nearly all paradigms. However, profound empirical studies based on more delicate and purpose-oriented designs of ICC concerning English majors have received little attention, leaving it somewhat a virgin land.Hence, the present study is undertaken to investigate the status quo of ICC across English majors through combinative analysis of the quantitative questionnaire data and the qualitative interview data. To be precise, the research questions addressed in this thesis are:1) What is the general level of intercultural communicative competence of English majors? 2) What kind of developmental pattern in ICC is evident among English majors? 3) What is the relationship between English majors’ intercultural communicative competence and their English proficiency?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted to ensure the reliability and validity of this investigation. The quantitative research mainly involves a self-reported questionnaire with the whole internal reliability reaching.991. The questionnaire consists of eight dimensions: Linguistic competence, Socio-linguistic competence, Discourse competence, Strategic competence, Knowledge, Attitude, Awareness and Skills. A total of 230 individuals participated, but only those questionnaires fully completed were used when analyzing the data, generating a sample of 205 usable sheets, including 61 freshmen,64 sophomore,48 juniors and 32 seniors. Questionnaires were administered and collected on May 9th,2015. Qualitative data were gathered from responses to open-ended interviews, where 12 students with the highest level, the medium level and the lowest level of ICC were selected, with each grade level having three of them respectively. The data were then retrieved through the Statistical Package for the Behavioral Sciences (SPSS) Version 19.0, where the procedures of descriptive analysis, One-Way ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were implemented. The interviews were conducted in Chinese, and the whole process was audio-taped and transcribed verbatim in Chinese. Findings were translated into English for more in-depth analysis.Detailed analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data yields findings presented as follows:Firstly, English majors’ ICC level is undesirable on the whole, for the mean score is 3.17. Of the eight subcategories of ICC, Linguistic competence ranks the first (Mean=3.28), indicating that English majors’ linguistic competence is generally better developed. The second highest mean belongs to Attitude (Mean=3.23), which suggests that students involved are willing to seek out or take up opportunities to engage with cultural interactions. Besides, English majors are generally able to display various skills in intercultural encounters, for the mean score of Skills is 3.21. On the other hand, students’ performance of Discourse competence is the least satisfactory, with the lowest mean score being 3.02. A further look at the statistics reveals that English majors do not have a good command of Awareness (Mean=3.09), Strategic competence (Mean=3.14), Social-linguistic competence (Mean=3.15) and Knowledge (Mean=3.16). When it comes to the sub-categories of 63 items, all the mean value of them are slightly above 3.00, with the exception of seven items’ scores below 3.00. To sum up, these noticeable statistics imply that English majors are deficient in almost all the eight components of ICC, which means that their ICC is not adequately developed with plenty of room for improvement.Secondly, there do exist a developmental pattern of English majors’ ICC in the process of their four years’ undergraduate English study. According to the mean scores displayed in four grade levels, English majors’ ICC increase linearly with the progression of academic years. Besides, results from One-Way ANOVA show significant differences exist between each of the four grade levels, as the value of Sig. (2-tailed) is 0.000. What’s more, Post hoc comparisons of means in the Tukey testing prove that the four groups catch all the significant mean difference at the.05 level between each other, with all the Sig. (2-tailed) value between each pair of grade levels being 0.000. These statistics further confirm that as grade level grows, students’ ICC exhibits different varieties in a continuous upward trend. To be more specific, the liner increase is displayed by a moderate increase from Freshmen (Mean=2.21) to Sophomores (Mean=2.71), a sharp advance from Sophomores to Juniors (Mean=4.15), and a further going up from Juniors to Seniors (Mean=4.47). Such a pattern shows after four years’ intensive and comprehensive English study on campus,most English majors have been gradually growing as more versatile talents equipped with both professional knowledge and intercultural communicative competence.Thirdly, ICC is a good predictor of the overall English proficiency. English majors’ ICC enjoys a moderately high and positive correlation with their English proficiency (r=.431**), indicating ICC is quite instrumental in improving English proficiency. In other words, the development of ICC keeps pace with the improvement of language proficiency for the English majors. Moreover, all the eight sub-categories of ICC are also positively correlated with English proficiency at different levels, suggesting that they can predict the learning outcome of English but they do not function most to influence English proficiency. To be specific, Awareness (r=.390**), Strategic competence(r=.388**), Attitude (r=.381**), Skills (r=.378**), Discourse competence (r=.337**) are lowly correlated with English proficiency, implying that these components have a relatively low positive effect on improving English majors’English proficiency. On the other hand, the correlation among Social linguistic competence (r=.425**), Knowledge (r=.409**), Linguistic competence (r=.408**) and English proficiency are comparatively significant, indicating the cultivation of these categories is essential in improving the proficiency of English majors.In view of the findings generated from this study, relevant pedagogical implications are put forward to achieve meaningful and durable impacts on English majors’ICC development. First, it is foreign language educators’responsibility to create various authentic intercultural contexts, in which students are engaged to seek cultural information from various sources and reflect critically on it. Meanwhile, educators are obliged to participate in effective teacher training programs on their parts, where they can think about how multiculturalism fit into their own educational practice and ponder upon methods for the integration of cultural elements into their classrooms. Also, Chinese educational institutions should be well-positioned to offer a robust diversity agenda to promote students’ICC by means of co-curricular offerings, such as intercultural forums, guest lectures, cultural houses, intercultural workshops etc. Moreover, given the positive correlation between language proficiency and ICC, it well implicates that in real language teaching, culture teaching should be carried out in line with language teaching, and learners’cultural ability should be developed synchronously with the training of basic skills.