An Analysis On Cultivating Intercultural Communicative Competence In Vocational College English Teaching

Intercultural communication is becoming more and more important with the rapid development of world economy and globalization. It has been drawing more and more attention of scholars both at home and abroad since the American anthropologist Edward Hall published his work "The Silent Language" in 1959. However, it was a long time before the research on the integration of intercultural communication and English language teaching was conducted. Because of that, intercultural teaching has not been effectively implemented in English language teaching in China. As the major goal of vocational English teaching is to cultivate students’ capacity to apply English language in practical work, English teachers should consciously infuse cultural knowledge into English teaching practice so as to effectively improve their intercultural communicative competence.It is generally believed that the students’ intercultural communicative competence refers to the appropriate and effective skills in communicating with people from other cultural backgrounds. At present, however, there are not enough courses related to intercultural courses in vocational colleges. Under such circumstances, the current paper attempts to research on how to cultivate the students’ intercultural communicative awareness and intercultural communicative competence. Three questions are to be studied in the research:1. What is the current situation of intercultural communicative competence among vocational college students?2. What are the accesses to English cultural knowledge for vocational college students?3. What are the students’ attitudes’ towards culture learning and intercultural communication?In this research, an experiment of 16 weeks was designed according to the teaching practice so as to find out answers to the research questions. 108 sophomores from one vocational college participated in this experiment. Before the experiment, Accounting Class 1 was randomly scheduled as Experimental Class and Geology Class1 was Controlled Class, with the students 54 respectively. A questionnaire and two tests were adopted in the experiment. In the Experimental Class, the integrated culture teaching approach was used, whereas, the Controlled Class adopted the traditional teaching approach. SPSS18.0 software is adopted to get data from the pre-test and post-test in the experimental class and controlled class. By analysis and comparison of data from the two classes in the two tests, the following major findings are concluded:1. A large number of English teachers still adopt the traditional teaching methods in English teaching. As a result, the students’ intercultural communicative competence can not be improved much than expected. According to the results of the pre-test, the majority of the students’ intercultural awareness was pretty weak, less developed and demanded to be improved.2. Results from the questionnaires show that teachers’ instructions are the main source of culture acquisition for most students, though there are various accesses to cultural knowledge. Data from the post-test also indicates that students from the Experimental Class have made considerable progress in intercultural competence after the experiment. Therefore, more efficient and effective culture teaching methods should be adopted to replace the traditional ones so as to enhance the students’ cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence.3. Most vocational college students have come to realize that it is necessary to study cultural knowledge in English learning, as English culture is of great help to English study. Subconsciously, students are eager to learn cultural knowledge by making use of resources available so as to cultivate their intercultural awareness.In summary, it is essential and feasible to carry out intercultural communicative teaching in vocational colleges so as to effectively develop their intercultural communication competence.