CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION
1.1 Research background
In the course of world economy integration, relationships among China and foreigncountries around the world are becoming more and more interdependent,accompanied with much closer economic cooperations. Meanwhile more and moreChinese enterprises are striving for going global. The demand for interdisciplinaryprofessionals with well-rounded competitiveness in foreign language, businessknowledge and intercultural competence is therefore more urgent than ever. Theeducation program for Business English undergraduate shall be aligned with thedevelopment of national economic environment and the demand in real businesscontexts. Therefore there is no doubt that developing undergraduates’ interculturalcompetence shall be attached with importance in BE teaching accordingly.Development of intercultural competence has already been clearly proposed inboth the Teaching Requirements of Business English BA Program of Colleges andUniversities (Trial) released in 2009, and the National Standards for BusinessEnglish BA Program Teaching Quality (new BEP National Standards) released inFebruary 2015 by the Ministry of Education. Understanding the current status ofstudents’ intercultural competence is essential for providing more specific advicesfor students and teachers to improve ICC in BE teaching. In order to learn about thestatus quo comprehensively, appropriate ICC assessment instrument is of particularsignificance for researchers, teachers and students in this case. Although researchersat home and abroad maintain various interpretations regarding the definitions andcomponents of intercultural competence, consensus has been reached thatintercultural competence is measurable (Deardorff, 2006:257-258). Hitherto therehas not been a universally recognized measuring instrument for interculturalcompetence assessment, which makes it difficult to present the overall status quo ofBE undergraduates’ICC through large-scale tests.
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1.2 Definition of intercultural competence
Numerous terms and definitions regarding intercultural (communicative)competence have been put forward by scholars worldwide over the past threedecades, including intercultural competence (Byram, 2014; Fantini, 2006),intercultural awareness (Chamberlin-Quinlisk, 2005), intercultural sensitivity(Bennett, 1993), etc.(cf. Peng, Wu and Fan, 2015). In the field of foreign languageteaching studies, the term intercultural (communicative) competence has beenwidely adopted. (e.g., Byram, 2014; Fantini, 2006; Sercu, 2006; Borghetti, 2013; cf.Peng, Wu & Fan, 2013), despite that the definition varies from different researchers’opinions. On the whole the interpretations and definitions of intercultural(communicative) competence can be divided into three categories (cf. Gao, 2014).Represented by Lustig (2007), Chen Guoming(2009) and Spitzberg (1994), the firstcategory regards intercultural competence and intercultural communicativecompetence as interchangeable terms. The second group of scholars, however,argues that intercultural competence is only part of intercultural communicativecompetence. As representative of the second category, Michael Byram argues thatlinguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence and discourse competence arealso components of intercultural communicative competence in addition tointercultural competence (Byram 2014:70-73). Sharing similar view as Byram,Fantini (2006) considers intercultural communicative competence as a complex ofabilities in mainly four dimensions— knowledge, attitudes, skills and awareness.The third category takes the opposite view that intercultural communicativecompetence is only one of the intercultural competence components, represented byKotthoff and Spencer-Oatey (2009: 465) (cf. Gao, 2014).
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CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Previous studies on intercultural competence assessment abroad
From a historical perspective, researches on intercultural competence emerge fromthe context of westerne
