A Study On The Status Quo Of Senior High School Students’ Intercultural Sensitivity

As a component of intercultural communication competence,intercultural sensitivity is often regarded as the starting point for improving intercultural communication.With the empirical research on intercultural sensitivity of high school students,it can better understand the current situation of intercultural sensitivity of high school students.Also,it can contribute English teaching and improve students’ intercultural sensitivity.Based on constructivism,affective filtering hypothesis and empathy theory and related research at home and abroad,the author uses questionnaire and interviews to investigate 300 senior high school students in Dakai High School and Wuzhou High school.The author analyzes the data with SPSS 20.Based on the results of the questionnaire,six students and three teachers were randomly selected for interviews.This study adopts Chen and Starosta’s Intercultural Sensitivity Scale,which compose of five dimensions: interaction engagement,respect for different cultures,interaction confidence,interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness.The purpose of this study is to explore the following three questions:(1)What is the current status of the investigated Grade Two students’ IS in senior high school?(2)Are there differences between Arts students’ IS and Science students’ IS?(3)What are the affecting factors of the investigated students’ IS?The research shows that:(1)The Grade Two students’ IS in senior high school is at the middle-to-upper level.Among them,the respect for different culture gets the highest score,followed by interaction engagement,interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness.The score of interaction confidence is the lowest.(2)There is no significant difference between Arts students and Science students,but the overallscore of Arts students’ IS is higher than Science students.(3)The affecting factors of the investigated school students’ intercultural sensitivity mainly including as follows:firstly,students have weak motivation of culture learning.Secondly,students lack enough intercultural communication experience.Last but not least,teachers do not pay much attention to culture teaching in English class.Based on the research results,the author put forward some suggestions for students and teachers.For students,they should improve their intercultural awareness,take part in intercultural communication activities and strengthen the intrinsic motivation of English cultural learning.For teachers,it is necessary to integrate English cultural teaching in the class and increase extracurricular intercultural activities.Teachers should improve teaching skills and provide students with intercultural reading material.Those suggestions are designed to help students increase their intercultural sensitivity and promote effective intercultural communication.