Abstract

Enhancing pupils’ intercultural communication competence (ICC) is a key EFL teaching goal in China and the pre-service English teachers’ ICC plays an essential role in it. This study aims to investigate the pre-service English teachers’ ICC levels and whether there were any differences between their ICC levels and their genders or their family origins in a public university in China. Data were collected from 186 pre-service English teachers by employing Zhong et al.’s (2013) “Intercultural Communication Competence Self Rating Scale (ICCSRS)”. The results showed that the pre-service English teachers’ ICC is only moderate with an average score of 3.20. Among the eight dimensions of the ICC, attitude showed the highest score (3.87) while linguistic competence showed the lowest (2.72). In addition, the study revealed the female pre-service English teachers have higher ICC than the male ones, but there is no difference between the urban and rural pre-service English teachers. As a result of the pre-service English teachers’ low level of ICC, the study suggested that the university should lay more emphasis on the ICC development in the teaching, provide more opportunities to communicate interculturally for the pre-service English teachers, and take a flexible policy in the class division and teaching.

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