Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Intercultural communication research began after World War II in United States.Intercultural communication refers to the communication between people fromdifferent cultural backgrounds. In recent years, interculturality has become anincreasingly significant component in the field of foreign language teaching in thathumans around the world are experiencing more and more intercultural transactionsas a natural outcome of globalization. Hence, Intercultural communicationcompetence (ICC) has been a focus in ELT (English language teaching) a nd alsocrucial in many different disciplines, such as communication, education andsociolinguistics. According to Chen and Starosta (1996), ICC is composed of threeconceptual dimensions, namely intercultural sensitivity, intercultural awareness, andintercultural adroitness. The development of intercultural communication competencerequires a positive attitude towards different cultural, of which a high interculturalcommunication sensitivity level, to understand and appreciate cultural differences inintercultural communication would be a prerequisite.With the transnational operations of large corporations, the internationalizationof economy and the extensive exchange of commodity, the communication amongdifferent cultures become increasingly frequent and the interaction among nationsbecomes more flourishing than any other period of history. The exchange of economy,politics and culture becomes so frequently that the whole world has become a globalvillage that is regarded as a single community. Intercultural communication activitiesinevitably occurred, the importance and necessity of being competent incommunicating with people from different culture become more and more significant.
…………
1.2 Purpose of the Research
This study investigated the profiles of intercultural sensitivity among two groupsof students: the international business major students from Guangdong University ofBusiness and English major students from Guangzhou University Sontan College.And the effect of some factors on their ICS level, i.e. English proficiency and ICcourse offered. The author tried to conduct an empirical study to evaluate the profileof the ICS level of these two groups of students by adopting Intercultural SensitivityScale (ISS), which developed by Chen & Starosta in 2017. This study was guided bythe following questions:
1. What is the Intercultural Sensitivity (ICS) level of international businessmajor students and English major students?
2. How is ICS structured between international business major students andEnglish major students?
3. What’s the relationship between ICS and English proficiency and IC courseoffered respectively for international business major students and Englishmajor students?
……………
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC)
Researches became interested in ICC because of its practical relevance to peoplewho started traveling to other countries for business or other purposes in the late1950s and early 60s. During the 1980s and 1990s, ICC has been studied extensivelyby sociologists, psychologists, sociolinguists, interculturalists, etc. in various contextssuch as sojourner adaption，英语论文网站，英语毕业论文
|
