Acknowledgements 15

References 16

Appendix Questionnaire 17

1 Introduction

1。1 Research Background

With rapid development of modern science and technology, more and more people reflect that different ethnic relations between people are becoming closer and closer, and the world has become increasingly small。 The concept of “Global Village” also has been introduced into our country。 This current situation urges our people, especially college students who have more connections than other common people, to keep up with times and to learn more about foreigners and their ways of dealing with personal relations so that we can communicate with them more smoothly。

1。2 Significance of the StudyFrom+优!尔.YouErw.com 加QQ75201`8766

With further deepening development of globalization, the concept of “global village” is widespread around the world, and people from every country in the world are faced with collision and conflicts of different cultures, which leads to an avoidable trend of research on cross-culture communication。 And specific research is especially on the high schedule。 This paper, based on Edward Hall’s theory of interpersonal distance, endeavors to analyze the collected statistics of the questionnaire, and to find the reasons for differences in interpersonal relations through cultural differences so as to get some guidance for daily communication between Chinese and Britain college students。

“Everyone has a need to own personal space and is quite sensitive to it。。。。 When communicating with others, people should pay attention to keep appropriate distance, and respect others’ independent personality and personal territory as well (Tian, 2003, p。 97)。”

“In our daily life, there are a large quantity of cases in which people have conflicts and get angry because of different needs and use of spatial distance。。。。 So if people come from different countries and cultural backgrounds, it is more possible to have conflicts and lead to misunderstanding。 In order to reduce such misunderstanding as much as possible and provide more opportunities for people from different cultures to communicate smoothly, research on cross-culture communication needs to be carried out (Xiong, 2006, p。 63)。”

To conclude, as an important way of nonverbal communication, interpersonal distance is always ignored in communication because people from different countries and cultural backgrounds may have totally different understandings on the same thing - space。 Thus, what is written above is the reasons why such research should be conducted, and is also the indispensability and significance of the research。论文网

1。3 Reasons for choosing British College students as the other object

British students were chosen as the target of this study to be compared with Chinese students and the reasons are as follows:

(1) English has become one of the most important languages or subjects for us, students, to learn and master, and Britain is home of English。 Although the USA can also be said to be land of English, there are some studies involving America and they can be used for references。 So the UK can be a representative to make this research be conducted 。 

(2) The statistics from Office of National Statistics indicate that there are more and more Chinese students going to Britain to study further。 There has been fifty-eight thousand Chinese students attending their universities, a 4% increase in the same period last year。 In 2010, only thirty-six thousand nine hundred and fifty Chinese students registered in British universities。 However, since 2010, the number has jumped with a 60% increase till now。 It is known from Chinese News that till June thirteenth in 2014 there has been more than 130 thousand students from Chinese Mainland in Britain。 Besides, until 2014, the number of students from Europe rank second only to Asia。