An Empirical Study On Cultivation Of Intercultural Communication Competence In Middle School English Teaching

English,as a universal language,is an important tool for people of all countries to communicate.According to the curriculum standards of major countries in the world,it is pointed out that intercultural communication competence(ICC)is an important ability for students to face the future,and it is believed that the cultivation of ICC mainly exists in foreign language teaching.China’s one belt,one road initiative will promote cooperation with other countries and promote a higher level of opening up to the outside,promote the construction of a community of human destiny.This further spawned China’s demand for intercultural communication talents.In 2017,China issued new curriculum standards for all disciplines based on core competence.The core competence of English requires improving students’ cultural awareness,and an important part of which is ICC.In recent years,in the stage of compulsory education,especially in middle school stage,the new curriculum standard puts forward clear requirements for students’ ICC-understanding cultural differences and forming cross-cultural awareness.At present,there are many problems in middle school English teaching,such as heavy academic burden,lack of cross-cultural awareness of teachers and students,improper teacher teaching methods and so on.Based on the above reasons,it is imperative to find a practical strategy to cultivate middle school students’ ICC.Using the mixed research method,the combination of qualitative research and quantitative research,this study conducted a questionnaire survey on the ICC of 232 students in a public middle school in a provincial capital city in Central China,and interviewed 6 teachers of the school through interview,so as to study the current situation and problems of the cultivation of ICC in middle school and clarify the influencing factors,put forward possible methods to improve students’ ICC.After that,a teaching experiment will be conducted for half a year on the methods that may improve students’ ICC.Finally,through classroom observation,teaching reflection and the comparison of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire data,we draw a conclusion,in order to provide reference for the teaching methods to improve middle school students’ ICC.The study found that there were significant differences in students’ ICC in grades,but there was no significant difference in gender and whether they had overseas experience;There is a significant correlation between the four dimensions of ICC: meta-cognition,cognition,motivation and behavior.Influenced by the cultural differences between Chinese and English,English teachers’ cultural literacy,English curriculum cultural environment and English teaching evaluation system,the cultivation of ICC in English teaching is difficult,and the actual implementation is poor.After the teaching experiment of cultivating ICC,it is found that the training strategies of taking theme as the unit,task as the engine,problem-solving as the target and cooperative learning as the core can improve middle school students’ ICC effectively.