Intercultural competence is necessary for intercultural communication, О.А.
Gorchakova put
forward a practical model of intercultural competence. This model consists of 3 main factors:
motivation, knowledge, and skill (Gorchakova O.A., 2013). Motivation factors
include
participants’ need for communication and interaction, mutual contact, social connection,
selfperception, and openness to perception of new information. Knowledge factors include
expectation, common information network, perception of different views, integration of
alternative views, and understanding of similar and different things. Skill factors include
demonstrating empathy, tolerating others, adapted to communication, creating a pleasant
communication environment, changing one’s behavior in the process of communication, and
taking other’s cultural conditions into account.
It’s a great and arduous task to improve intercultural pragmatic competence. To solve this
problem, it is necessary to constantly update teaching methods to maximize the role of
listening, speaking, reading, and writing in teaching. The improvement
of intercultural
pragmatic competence is beneficial to forming intercultural communicative competence.
Intercultural communication is the full social interaction between two participants or among
many participants represented by different national cultures in the communication. In the
teaching of second language, students will make a comprehensive analysis of relevant
knowledge in their minds by feeling the spiritual connotation and recognizing the world
landscape of the second language, including the comparison of characteristics of local culture,
cultures of various languages and relevant background information. In this way, students can
integrate and expand their own cultural landscape and upgrade their intercultural pragmatic
competence.
“Pragmatics is a perspective rather than a parallel component of linguistic theory” [11]. The
emotion, thought, and culture expressed by language are the
embodiment of the language
vitality, and the goal of the cultivation of pragmatic competence. If the teaching of second
language is only for the infusion of language knowledge, without the collision and comparison
of ideas and cultures, or correct expression and communication of emotions, it is dereliction of
duty of teaching. In modern society, education is a necessary way for individuals to grow and a
convenient way to gain personal experience. Only by linking
language education with
pragmatic competence can language education play its due role.