Abstract:

Because of increasing global engagement in the higher education sector, a surging number of international students have applied for degree programs at Chinese universities in recent years. They have become an important part of Chinese higher education. They have classroom learning with Chinese students, forming mixed classes, which bring both opportunities and challenges to university teachers. Nowadays, how to improve the teaching quality of mixed classes has become a hot issue concerned by many Chinese universities. However, this issue cannot be resolved without considering students' intercultural competence.

This poster presents a qualitative case study of Chinese and overseas students’ cross-cultural competence changes in a mixed class. It selected a general elective course "Critical Thinking and English Debate" offered by a Chinese STEM university as a case. This course adopted blended instruction, with aims of broadening students’ international perspective, developing their critical thinking and improving their communication skills. Guided by Fantini’s four dimensions of intercultural competence - awareness, attitude, skill and knowledge, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with all the course participants (5 Chinese students and 3 international students) at the end of this course. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data in order to investigate the changes of these students' intercultural competence and the reasons.

Research findings show that in this mixed class, Chinese students' cross-cultural awareness and skills were improved, but their intercultural knowledge and attitude did not change too much. As for international students, all aspects of their intercultural competence were improved significantly except for the dimension of attitude. Therefore, it is argued that mixed classes could be effective in enhancing students' intercultural competence. Nevertheless, university teachers still need to pay more attention to their students' cross-cultural attitudes during their teaching practice.

Keywords:

Cross-cultural competence, critical thinking, international students, Chinese universities.