Research On Multimodal Assessment Of Intercultural Communication Competence

The modern wave of globalization has created a considerable demand for increased intercultural communication competence(ICC)of college graduates.“College English Syllabus”,as the National College English teaching guidance document,states clearly that intercultural communication competence is a fundamental part of English learning and teaching.At present,there are many researches on the cultivation of ICC home and abroad,while only a few focus on ICC assessment.With "intercultural communicative competence assessment / evaluation /measurement" as key words,only 80 references are detected in Hownet.This thesis attempts to construct the framework of ICC multimodal assessment based on the multimodal theory,aimed at promoting the intercultural communication teaching and improving students' ICC by means of the backwash effect.Multimodalization refers to a mixture of different semiotic modalities in communication.It can also refer to the ways that different symbolic resources are mobilized in a particular text to co-construct the meaning.The multimodal teaching theory advocates using multimodalities,such as network,pictures,sound and so on to obtain,transmit and receive information,and using various teaching methods to mobilize students' sensory coordination,and accordingly to mobilize students to participate in language learning.Based on the multimodal theory,this thesis attempts to construct a framework of ICC multimodal assessment.First of all,the author follows Byran's viewpoint to determine the connotation of ICC,including the attitude,knowledge and skills.Secondly,the author manages to decide on ICC assessment modalities.With reference to Professor Zhang Delu's study on multimodal teaching framework,first classify the students into three levels of basic,higher and advanced,then select different teaching methods for different levels of students.Teaching modes are applied naturally since they are well matched to the teaching methods.For example,visual modes and audio modes are selected in the listening and speaking method,language modes is selected in the case analysis method.Under the principle of the consistency of teaching modes and testing modes,the testing modes are determined.With the test content and testing modes,the framework of multimodal ICC assessment is constructed.This paper consists of five chapters: Chapter one is the introduction of the research significance and the thesis framework.Chapter two is the literature review,demonstrating the research status home and abroad of ICC,ICC assessment andmultimodal theory.Chapter three is the theoretical basis,elaborating the multimodal theory and communicative language testing theory.Chapter four is the most important part,explaining the theoretical framework of multimodal assessment of ICC based on review of ICC composition,communicative language testing theory,multimodal teaching theory,then the author demonstrates some assessment items designed under the ICC multimodal assessment framework.Chapter five summarizes the whole thesis and puts forward the research deficiency and the further research plan.