Research Background 研究背景

As globalization's increasingly accelerates, effective communication nowadays has been a heated issue in intercultural communication. Since early 1980s ago, intercultural communication was introduced by Foreign Language World and accelerated recently in domestic. Nowadays, the cultivation of intercultural competence is attracting great attention among scholars and experts. It has become a consensus foreign language teaching especially foreign language teaching in universities should be combined with its own culture. So great is the attention that scholars and experts attach to it that not only the teaching methods or language textbooks, but also the syllabus design and course project underline that language acquisition must be accompanied by cultural background.

In recent years, intercultural communication has become a popular topic, emphasized by a great number of articles and treatises. Thomas J. indicated that grammatical faults are easy to be found from the surface by addressee. Once the mistakes appear, the addresser will be deemed as one who ‘s lack of enough relevant language knowledge as well as be forgiven by addressee. (Thomas J. 1984) Nevertheless, pragmatical mistakes will be viewed solemnly rather than grammatical mistakes. If a man, speaking fluent English, makes pragmatical mistakes. It is more likely that he will be considered impolite or unfriendly, even his failure in communication is capable of being misunderstood as rudeness or hostility instead of lack of language skills and cultural background.

Research Significance 研究重要性

In light of globalization, intercultural competence plays a essential role, through which domestic world will be able to communicate with international world. Intercultural competence is a range of cognitive, affective, and behavioural skills that lead to communicate effectively and appropriately with people of other cultures. In today’s world, the grammatical systems of language as well as the intercultural competence has become important content in domestic university education. Inter-cultural competence is an inter-disciplinary subject as well. Even if it performs well in other fields such as commerce, but most of domestic research attach importance to the role cross-cultural competence plays in foreign language teaching rather than other fields. The item “cultural literacy” first appeared in the college English teaching syllabus published in 1999. Since then, culture teaching was started to be integrated with language teaching in English teaching.In the trial version of the college English syllabus published in 2004, "intercultural communication" was officially listed as one of the college English teaching objectives for the first time. Although the syllabus didn’t provide detailed guidance and regulations for the cultivation of cultural teaching and intercultural communication competence, but it indicated the direction for college foreign language teaching and research. More and more teachers and scholars began to study in the intercultural communication competence. (Jiang Bo, 2014). According to CNK, domestic scholars, focusing on intercultural competence, worked in succession since 1999 and relevant research developed drastically till 2004. On account of that domestic research on cross-cultural communication and inter-cultural competence started lately, compared with eastern countries, plenty of foreign research results and theories were introduced or cited into China. For instance, Byram, Sercu and other several experts’ theories appeared in domestic intercultural competence research and reference. Our scholars have supported these theories while citing these theories, in another word, most scholars have adopted the definition of intercultural communication competence by foreign experts.The cultivation of intercultural communicative competence includes cultural knowledge and interpretation, as well as the competence that participants correctly understand domestic culture and international culture.

That is to say, besides simple input of language knowledge, foreign language learning is supposed to embrace the cultivation of intercultural competence. Method cultivating intercultural spirit and competence differs a lot. Recent research pay more attention on teaching strategy based on Film appreciation rather than on songs’ appreciation when students are in multimedia class. This paper, aiming at discussing effects of songs’ appreciation on college students’ intercultural competence, is expected to survey several non-English major domestic college students for analyzing their methods of language input, effects of language course and intercultural competence by means of quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Literature Review 文献综述

The envelope of skin separate us from each other. (Larry A. Samovar 2000) Various dimensions of language education are considered in view of historical, international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary phenomena. For example, in his paper, Byram provides a historical overview of foreign language education trends and later compares recent policy statements on foreign language teaching objectives from Japan, the United States, and the European Union (EU). Although Byram supports the shift in educational priorities set forth in such policy documents, he asserts that, in most cases, teaching practices fall short of the policies.(Byram,M.2008) In his analysis, Byram explores the value of intercultural dimensions in education and experience, establishing the pursuit of intercultural competence and communication as a point of congruity through which educators, researchers, and policy makers might begin to bridge the divides that separate policy from practice and language education from civic education.