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In the 21^st Century, Chinese L2 is facing new challenges caused by the rapid development of information communication technology and internationalization. In this changing global context, how Chinese L2 learners effectively perform intercultural communication has become a crucial element in this education. While it is agreed that intercultural communication competence should be included in the present Chinese L2 education, practical research, such as how to integrate cultural elements into an existing course’s syllabus, remains an open field for scholars and teachers to explore.

This action research endeavors to fill this research gap by exploring the scope of possibilities and limitations in implementing intercultural communication theory into an Internet-based Chinese L2 course for beginners at the university level and by investigating how it could enhance learners’ intercultural communication competence. The research applies a modified framework for communicative competence of second language education which is originally proposed by Usó-Juan and Martinez-Flor’s (2006). The theory suggests that when enhancing the learners’ intercultural communication competence in a foreign language education, it will gradually enhance the learners’ overall performance in linguistic, pragmatic and strategic competence.

Action research seems to be well suited methodology in this study since it allows the researcher (who is also the teacher of the target course) to gather evaluative and reflective data from a direct/insider’s experience. In order to minimize the risk of subjectivity in the action research, this research also applies traditional research methodology, such as distributing and analyzing questionnaires, documentary data collections, in-depth interview, etc.

The first research session of this research was designed to investigate the control groups in 2013 in which the researcher observed how students learned in the target course in its original settings. The data of the control group was then be used as a reference for the experimental groups in 2014 when the students were taught by modified teaching materials in which intercultural communication were highlighted.

This paper will focus on presenting the findings of the first session of this research: (1) what the cultural elements explicitly and implicitly integrated into this language course are, and (2) how these cultural elements affect students’ intercultural communication in different social scenarios, such as introducing themselves and presenting other people, making phone calls, responding to compliments, etc. The findings are a valuable reference and a stepping-stone towards the second session of this action research in 2014.