A Study On The Correlation Between International Exchange Students' Intercultural Sensitivity And Pragmatic Competence

With the development of economic globalization and the promotion of the Belt and Road initiative,the intercultural communication among countries is becoming more and more frequently,which requires the cultivation of international talents.As an essential factor in cross-cultural communication,intercultural sensitivity has aroused wide attention of scholars both abroad and at home.Meanwhile,pragmatic competence has been a hot issue in foreign language teaching and research.Therefore,it is of great necessity to carry out the study dealing with the correlation of intercultural sensitivity and pragmatic competence of international exchange students,which has a significant impact on enhancing students' intercultural communication competence.Guided by the theory of intercultural sensitivity and pragmatic competence,the present research implemented its study among international exchange students to investigate the correlation between intercultural sensitivity and pragmatic competence as well as the differences of pragmatic competence to these students with high intercultural sensitivity and low intercultural sensitivity respectively.The current research conducted the study among 106 international exchange students who came from Xi'an Polytechnic University and other alike common universities.And 5 teachers and 10 exchange students participated in the interview.Besides,SPSS 16.0 software was employed to analyze the collected data.By adopting both quantitative and qualitative study,the present research aims at answering the following questions.(1)What is the current situations of intercultural sensitivity and pragmatic competence of international exchange students?(2)Is intercultural sensitivity correlated with pragmatic competence of international exchange students? If it is,what is the correlation between intercultural sensitivity and pragmatic competence?(3)Are there any differences in pragmatic competence to these students between high intercultural sensitivity and low intercultural sensitivity respectively? If there are,what are the differences?The research results are shown as follows.(1)The current situation of intercultural sensitivity and pragmatic competence of international exchange students are in medium level.(2)Intercultural sensitivity and each factor of it have positive correlation with pragmatic competence.Besides,the factors of Interaction Engagement and Interaction Attentiveness have significant impact on pragmatic competence.(3)International exchange students with high intercultural sensitivity have high pragmatic competence.Compared with pragmalinguistic competence,students with different intercultural sensitivity have significant difference on sociopragmatic competence.It can be concluded that intercultural sensitivity positively correlates to pragmatic competence of international exchange students.Therefore,improving intercultural sensitivity can effectively enhance pragmatic competence,which promotes their intercultural communication competence.