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And during these years, China has issued some documents concerning the importance of ICC Competence. In the New Standard Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2011), cultural awareness is regarded as an indispensable component of the general goal. It emphasizes that through English teaching , teachers should inculcate students with basic information about the foreign countries, including their history, geography, art, life styles, values, concepts, etc. The Standard points that the ICC knowledge should be relevant with students’ real life, which can arouse students’ interests and promote their cultivation of ICC Competence.
Byram (2008) once put that the process of cultivating students’ ICC Competence in middle school is doomed to be an arduous and long-term task. Since ICC Competence is too abstract a concept for a student in junior middle school, few studies have researched on the relationship between a certain teaching method and its’ influence on the cultivation of ICC Competence in junior middle class. Besides, it is quite difficult for a teacher to effectively promote his students’ ICC Competence through limited English classes. Thus, an efficient teaching method needs to be explored for the English teacher to cultivate students ICC Competence. Hence, by applying Situational Teaching Method into practice, the thesis aims to examine whether students’ ICC competence have been improved and to demonstrate the effect of the Situational Teaching Method in cultivation of students’ ICC Competence, which may have a profound influence for the further studies on the cultivation of ICC Competence.
The present study intends to answer the questions as below:
(1) What is the present situation of junior middle school students’ ICC Competence?
(2) How does Situation Teaching Method function in the cultivation of ICC Competence in junior English class?
(3) Will there be progress of students' ICC Competence under Situation Teaching Method?
2. Literature Review
2.1 The Intercultural Communication Competence
2.1.1 The Definition of Intercultural Communication Competence
The discussion on the definition of ICC Competence is heated over years, however, there hardly exists a consensus on this topic. According to Wen Qiufang’s diagram (Wen,2004), ICC Competence is comprised of Communicative Competence and Cross-cultural Competence. Linguistic Competence, Pragmatic Competence and Strategic Competence are under the category of Communicative Competence, while Sensitivity, Tolerance and Flexibility are under the name of Cross-cultural Competence.
Generally, ICC Competence refers to the degree to which an inpidual is able to exchange information effectively and appropriately with inpiduals who are culturally dissimilar (Rogers and Steinfatt, 1999). Spitzberg(2000) defines ICC Competence as an impression which is appropriate and effective in a certain context. Perry and Southwell(2011) put that although there’s no accordant definition on the term, scholars who work on this field all admit the fact that ICC Competence refers to the ability that human beings can associate with foreigners more effectively and appropriately.
2.1.2 The Components of Intercultural Communication Competence
Samovar&Porter(1994) categorize the ICC Competence into three aspects: motivation, knowledge and skill. This model is widely adapted and is applied to large sums of researches. On the basis of behavioral scale for Intercultural Competence Basic, Gudykuns(2005) illustrates the components of ICC Competence from 8 aspects, including display of respect, orientation to knowledge, empathy, interaction management, task role behavior, relational role behavior, tolerance for ambiguity and interaction posture. Lustig and Koester (2007) propose that ICC Competence can only be acquired by possessing the following three elements: sufficient knowledge, appropriate motivation and well-trained action. That is to say, nothing but only the combination of the three elements can form the ICC Competence. Moreover, Jia Yuxin(1997) suggests that the effective ICC Competence consists of basic communication system, emotional and relationship system, episodic competence system and communicative strategy system. Bi Jiwan(2005) puts that the ICC Competence is an integrated ability which is made up of verbal communicative ability, non-verbal communicative ability, language rules ability, communicative rule transformation ability and culture adaptability.