An Investigation on Intercultural Communication among Chinese Postgraduate Students at the University of Edinburgh

Abstract

With the increase of globalization and international trade, the study on intercultural communication has become more and more important. The aim of this project is to investigate the intercultural communication among Chinese postgraduate students at the University of Edinburgh. The project specifically explores the social friendship networks of Chinese postgraduate students, their intercultural communicative competence after one-year abroad study and the perceived and real communication problems they come across in intercultural interactions. Three instruments, questionnaire, recording and interview are adopted in this project. The Results revealed that, though Chinese students involved actively in English networks and their intercultural communicative competence were improved in the one-year abroad study, most of Chinese students (97%) still had difficulty in communicating with students from other cultures. It was reported that the problem of Chinese students’ language proficiency and the problem of culture were the two major groups of communication problems in Chinese students’ intercultural encounters. The findings suggest that more emphasis should be placed on intercultural communication knowledge in China’s English Language Teaching.