Development of Cross-Cultural Communication Course Based on Situational Language Teaching Combined with Blended Learning to Enhance English Major Students’ Cross-Cultural Communicative Ability in Xi’an University

Background and Aims: Since the founding of New China, especially after entering the 21st century, the growth rate of the number of ordinary colleges and universities and the number of students in the school has accelerated significantly, and higher education has moved from the elite to the common people. The continuous growth of the number of colleges, universities, and high-level specialized personnel training has laid a talent foundation for the socialist modernization drive of all walks of life in China. Cross-cultural communication has become a necessity in people’s everyday lives with globalization, the internet, and the general shrinking of time and space. Cross-cultural communication has become much more important than before. So does the cross-cultural communication course. This study was a research and development study. The objectives of this research were 1) to study the background information focusing on course components and existing problems of Cross-cultural communication course, 2) to develop a cross-cultural communication course based on situational language teaching combined with blended learning to enhance cross-cultural communicative ability, and 3) to study the results of implementing cross-cultural communication course based on situational language teaching combined with blended learning to enhance cross-cultural communicative ability. Materials and Methods: The sample was 30 junior students, majoring in English at Xi’an University, the People's Republic of China. They were derived by cluster random sampling. The instruments used in this research were 1) a cross-cultural communication course based on situational language teaching combined with blended learning 2) 8 lesson plans 3) a cross-cultural communicative ability test with a reliability of .73, (t = 7.71, p<.01) and 4) a student’s satisfaction questionnaire with a reliability of .79. The statistics used for data analysis were mean, standard deviation, and t-test for one sample and t-test for dependent samples. Results: The research results were found that 1) Phase 1: the draft course components consist of six aspects. Principles 2. objectives 3. contents 4. instructional strategy 5. media and resources 6. Evaluation and the problems of this course were: 1. The current principles are based on teacher-centered theory. 2. The current objectives focused on the acquisition of basic knowledge, with little attention to developing cross-cultural communicative ability. 3. The content was not up to date. 4. Teaching strategies based on traditional methods. 5. The media was a little out of date. 6. The evaluation method did not cover three domains. 2) Phase 2: the cross-cultural communication course based on situational language teaching combined with blended learning consisted of 6 components: 1) formulate principles, 2) determine objectives, 3) select content, 4) construct instructional strategy, 5) select media and resources, 6) design evaluation methods. Formulate the principles based on student-centered theory, determine objectives to solve practical problems, select content, contract instructional strategy, and select teaching material and evaluation, which are verified by 5 experts (2 experts in curriculum and instruction, 2 experts in evaluation methodology, and 1 expert in the English language). (M=4.33, SD=0.55). The teaching process has five steps: 1. student grouping and resource allocation (online), 2. presentation of a situation (offline), 3. supervised learning process (offline), 4. achievement evaluation and performance extraction (offline), 5. test and application of new theory and new experience (online). 3) Phase 3: after implementation of the course, pretest scores (M=19, SD=1.64) of students’ cross-cultural communicative ability were lower than post-test scores (M=23.67, SD=3.34) at a .01 level of statistical significance, and students’ satisfaction toward the course (M=4.33, SD=.39) were higher than the 3.51 criterion at the significance level of .05. Conclusion: The innovation of this research is the developed course components, especially the teaching method, which is based on situational language teaching combined with blended learning that allows students to analyze extensive cases in cross-cultural communication within carefully designed teaching tasks. In evaluation, due to the high proportion of the total score allocated to the cross-cultural communication ability and the learner-determined topics, situational language teaching combined with a blended learning approach can greatly stimulate English major students’ interest and play a positive role in the actual scene, helping to cultivate students’ cross-cultural communicative ability. The situational language teaching combined with a blended learning approach can also increase their satisfaction with the developed course. This study has both theoretical and practical significance. Firstly, the research proposes the role of situational language teaching combined with a blended learning approach that is based on students’ performance in cross-cultural communication. Secondly, it is confirmed in this study that language use and production are an essential part of cross-cultural communication learning, and that one can learn cross-cultural communication through using the language. Situational language teaching combined with blended learning is suitable for daily teaching because it can enhance the cross-cultural communicative ability of English major students and help increase their satisfaction.