The Effect Of An Intercultural Communication Course On English Major Graduates’ Intercultural Sensitivity

The globalization process requires people to have intercultural communication competence to communicate effectively and appropriately with others from different cultures.In the foreign language teaching field,improving students’ intercultural communication competence has been emphasized.As an important component of intercultural communication competence,intercultural sensitivity is obtaining more and more attention of scholars both abroad and at home.Some scholars have found that the cultivation of intercultural sensitivity contributes to the improvement of intercultural communication competence.Therefore,a large number of empirical researches on intercultural sensitivity have been conducted.However,none of the empirical researches at home have measured the effect of an intercultural communication course on the learners’ intercultural sensitivity so far.And few researches have taken English major graduates as the research subjects.The present study utilizes Chen and Starosta’s intercultural communication competence theory and intercultural sensitivity theory as the theoretical foundations and uses the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale developed by the same authors to measure and analyze English major graduates’intercultural sensitivity before and after taking an intercultural communication course to find out the effect of an intercultural communication course on English major graduates’ intercultural sensitivity.Three research questions are to be answered in the present study.1)What are the changes of English major graduates’ overall intercultural sensitivity level after taking an intercultural communication course?2)What are the differences of English major graduates’performances on the five factors of the ISS before and after taking an intercultural communication course?3)What factors help or hinder the development of English major graduates’ intercultural sensitivity in the intercultural communication course?Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used in the present study.After the collection of the questionnaire responses,the descriptive analysis,the Paired-samples t-test and the Spearman correlation analysis are used for the quantitative research.In addition,the classroom observation and a semi-structured interview are used for the qualitative research.The 16-week empirical research which involves a pre-test at the beginning of the semester and a post-test at the end of the semester has three major findings.Firstly,in the overall level,the intercultural communication course in the present study has a significantly positive effect on English major graduates’ intercultural sensitivity.Secondly,in terms of the five factors of the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale,English major graduates exhibit a very high level of Respect for Culture Differences and a very low level of Interaction Confidence in both the pre and post-test.The Spearman correlation analysis also shows that while students are willing to accept and respect cultural differences,they lack sufficient confidence to experience the differences in real intercultural communication.What’s more,the intercultural communication course in the present study has significantly positive effects on two factors:Interaction Engagement and Respect for Cultural Differences.Thirdly,the semi-structured interview reveals more insights about four effective factors associated with the development of intercultural sensitivity.It can be concluded that the awareness of the importance of systematic intercultural learning,the diverse and interesting teaching activities,the interculturally sensitive teacher and the effective culture learning strategies contribute a great deal to the students’ intercultural sensitivity development.Methodologically,the present study enriches the way in which empirical researches on intercultural sensitivity can be conducted.Pedagogically,the results of the study can serve as a guide in cultivating students’ intercultural sensitivity and improving intercultural education.