An Investigation On ICC Among Non-English Major Academic Master Students In CBI Graduate English Context

Intercultural communication activities nowadays permeate master graduate students' daily lives and their academic researches with the rapid development of globalization and internationalization,so to develop their ICC has become essential and imperative in graduate English teaching.According to the Non-English Major Gradates English Teaching Syllabus(1992),the aim of graduate English teaching is to cultivate students' ability to utilize English as a tool to learn subject matters,to do academic research and to participate in international communicating activities.Namely,graduate English teaching should focus more on developing students' ability of using English in academic research and in intercultural communication,instead of merely centering on language skills and language structures.However,the traditional English teaching model that focuses more on language skills and language forms cannot meet the academic need and communicative necessity of non-English major academic master graduate students(simplified as graduate students).Cai(2011)contends that the outcome of such a teaching model is far from satisfaction.Because it emphasizes more language structures and language skills,ignoring the subject matters,the contents as well as the communicative function of language.Conversely,CBI as a content-driven model integrates language learning into subject matter learning by using authentic materials in a certain field and creating real communicating context.Moreover,it has gained great success in second/foreign language education at home and abroad.Under such a background,this study intends to investigate graduate students' ICC in a CBI English course and it primarily focuses on the following three questions:1.What is the status quo of ICC among graduate students?2.Can CBI model improve students' ICC?3.What attitudes do students have toward the CBI model?This empirical study lasts two semesters to test the efficacy of CBI English course on enhancing graduate students' ICC.300 graduate students of Yunnan NormalUniversity are randomly chosen as the research subjects.They are first-year graduate students of 2017,most of whom have learned English for about fourteen years.The study is divided into two periods —the pretest(the first questionnaire test)and the post-test(the second questionnaire test).The pretest involves testing the status quo of students' ICC before they took this course in their first English class in September of2017.Post-test was done at the end of June in 2018 when they finished the two-semester CBI course.Besides,in the study,class observation and interviews are done to know teaching activities,process of CBI course and to analyze the attitudes of students toward the CBI course.The major findings are as follows:(1)The results of research question one demonstrate that as graduates who have learned English for about fourteen years,their ICC is generally at a low level.(2)The results of research question two indicate that the CBI English course can promote the development of students' ICC.(3)The results of research question three reveal that most of graduate students hold a positive attitude toward CBI English course in their graduate English class.This study is of great significance to enrich both studies of ICC and CBI in different viewpoints.Besides,the other immense significance of this study is to promote the potential shift of traditional graduate English teaching to CBI course in the upsurge of current foreign language education reforming in China.