Author(s)

LiXian Hou

Affiliation(s)

School of Foreign Studies, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, Guangdong, China.

Corresponding Author

LiXian Hou

ABSTRACT

Intercultural courses for English majors in Chinese higher education have predominantly focused on the introduction of basic cultural knowledge from the mainstream English-speaking countries and the relevant linguistic expressions of such cultures. This approach is neither conducive to cultivating students’ critical thinking on cultural similarities and differences nor improving their global competence. The globalized development and the new-era mission of enhancing China’s international communication capacity have raised higher requirement for English majors to gain intercultural awareness and competence with the combination of “the love for family and country”, “global perspective”, and “telling China’s stories well”. This study draws insights from the emerging theory of Digital Multimodal Composing in foreign language education and adopts a formative assessment teaching strategy to organically incorporate the three aforementioned aspects in the reform of the English majors’ intercultural course - Comparison of Chinese and Foreign Cultures. Based on the integration of a short video project as the formative assessment into the reform, the study reveals that by facilitating students’ analysis of cultural differences between China and other countries via multimodality, we could strengthen their identification with Chinese culture, improve their critical thinking skills regarding cultural similarities and differences, and boost their capacity to effectively tell and disseminate China’s stories from the global perspective of Sino-foreign cultural dialogue.

KEYWORDS

Digital multimodal composing; Teaching reform; Intercultural course; English major

CITE THIS PAPER

LiXian Hou. Integration of digital multimodal composing assessment into the teaching reform of intercultural courses for English majors. World Journal of Educational Studies. 2025, 3(7): 6-11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.61784/wjes3093.

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