Mengting Gong, Yining Chen, Xiaofei Zhang

Mengting Gong

30 June, 2024

Generation Z, Foreign language majors, Telling China’s stories well, International communication capacity.

The world today is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century. China urgently needs to show and guard its positive national image in international society. So cultivating skilled communicators is the key to narrating China’s stories. Accordingly, in this study, a qualitative in-depth interview is employed to analyze the group features and the ability of communicative literacy of foreign language majors in Generation Z. 16 graduate and undergraduate interviewees are asked questions like cognitive expression, communication awareness, and media use. The results show that these representatives of Generation Z unanimously agreed that foreign language majors should have outstanding abilities in innovative thinking, expression ability, cross-cultural communication awareness, and a strong aptitude for adapting to various media platforms. However, the study also shows these students are facing challenges in language learning, such as insufficient comprehensive language application ability and the inadequate capacity to "tell China's stories well." Therefore, the paper suggests that higher education should respect the identified group characteristics and competency composition of foreign language majors in Generation Z, prioritize the cultivation of students' comprehensive understanding of China's stories, and build their cultural confidence. Meanwhile, foreign language majors urgently need to reinforce their language proficiency, international communication capacity, and digital technique application ability. Generally, foreign language majors in Generation Z will inevitably and eventually become a new force in spreading China's international influence.

© 2024, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license