A Study of Intercultural Competence in Digital Era for Chinese as a Foreign Language Teachers

Nowadays, as the Chinese as a Foreign language continues to heat up, the dispatched Chinese teachers and foreign students studying Chinese as a Foreign language have encountered more and more problems in the cultivation of intercultural competence. This study is grounded by Byram’s intercultural competence model to conduct a series of questionnaires and structured interviews which hope to answer the perspectives of current teachers of Chinese as a foreign, their professional skill development related of intercultural competence in the digital era and how they perceive intercultural competence contributes to learner’ Chinese communicative competence. It shows that currently Chinese as a foreign language teacher’s lack of emphasis on cultural teaching, and also awareness of the cultivation of intercultural competence. Teachers of Chinese as a foreign language will be able to improve their intercultural competence accordingly in the digital era surrounding foreign cultural knowledge, the ability to adapt to the new culture, curiosity and respect for foreign culture by which criteria will help improve students’ Chinese communication competence the most.