Abstract
Enhancing pupils’ intercultural communication competence (ICC) is a key EFL teaching goal in China and the pre-service English teachers’ ICC plays an essential role in it. This study aims to investigate the pre-service English teachers’ ICC levels and whether there were any differences between their ICC levels and their genders or their family origins in a public university in China. Data were collected from 186 pre-service English teachers by employing Zhong et al.’s (2013) “Intercultural Communication Competence Self Rating Scale (ICCSRS)”. The results showed that the pre-service English teachers’ ICC is only moderate with an average score of 3.20. Among the eight dimensions of the ICC, attitude showed the highest score (3.87) while linguistic competence showed the lowest (2.72). In addition, the study revealed the female pre-service English teachers have higher ICC than the male ones, but there is no difference between the urban and rural pre-service English teachers. As a result of the pre-service English teachers’ low level of ICC, the study suggested that the university should lay more emphasis on the ICC development in the teaching, provide more opportunities to communicate interculturally for the pre-service English teachers, and take a flexible policy in the class division and teaching.
Highlights
With the close relationship between language and culture has been widely acknowledged, intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has become one of the teaching goals in many countries
This section presents the results from the overall level of ICC and the relationship between the pre-service English teachers’ ICC and gender as well as family background
The scale used in this study is to comprehensively measure the ICC of the pre-service English teachers in a normal university from eight sub-dimensions
Summary
With the close relationship between language and culture has been widely acknowledged, intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has become one of the teaching goals in many countries. The English Teaching Syllabus for English Major Program in Higher Education (2000) stipulated in the teaching requirements that “focusing on the cultivation of intercultural communicative competence. In the teaching of professional courses, attention should be paid to cultivating students’ sensitivity, tolerance and flexibility in dealing with cultural differences” As for the basic education, the English Curriculum Standards (2011) stipulated that the general goal of English teaching is to develop students’ comprehensive capability of language use, which includes five dimensions of learning strategy, emotion and attitude, language knowledge, language skills, and cultural awareness
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