Cultivation of Intercultural Communication Competence of English Teacher Training Students in Colleges and Universities in Ethnic Areas under the Background of Deep Learning

The assessment of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is increasingly recognized as a critical component of students’ professional competency development in higher education settings. This paper explores the objectives of cultivating ICC and proposes an assessment scheme aligned with the principles of competency cultivation and the ICC acquisition model. To elucidate the linkage between teaching activities and ICC development, the Apriori algorithm is employed to analyze their relationships and to construct a weight matrix for these activities. Further, the Sim Rank algorithm is applied to determine similarities among students, while the K-means algorithm is used to cluster students into distinct groups. The assessment system’s feasibility is validated by analyzing the variations in assessment outcomes. This study also conducts a detailed graphical analysis of students’ attitudes towards ICC and examines the influence of five dimensions of English language proficiency—listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translating—on ICC. The results reveal a strong correlation between the three ICC dimensions—attitude, knowledge, and skill—with the overall ICC level. These dimensions are ranked in terms of correlation strength as follows: knowledge (0.963), skill (0.881), and attitude (0.758). Additionally, a positive correlation exists between the five facets of English language proficiency and cross-cultural variables, suggesting that learning English and cultivating ICC are mutually reinforcing. This underscores the need to enhance English language instruction to effectively support the development of ICC.