Thanks to the rapid development of science and technology, the world is getting smaller. The whole world community appears to be no more than a large global village, where the "villagers" come together with different cultural backgrounds and values. While experiencing the inevitable cultural exchanges as well as cultural clashes, the "villagers" seek to live in harmony. International contact requires that culture teaching should play a more and more significant role in English language teaching. The present thesis analyses potential barriers in effective intercultural communication and some important components of intercultural competence. Based on this theoretical exploration, a classroom observation and an interview of some students and English teachers were conducted to examine the scope and approaches to culture teaching in oral English class.With the result of the investigation, the author points out the problems existing in the process of culture teaching in oral English class in China. The problems identified are: (1) Most students have not taken the initiative to improve their own communicative competence; (2) Some teachers are not confident about their own intercultural knowledge and are not quite sure about what can be taught exactly in class. The author then draws some conclusions from the research: It is necessary to create an environment, which is conducive to the second language acquisition, and apply different teaching methods in oral English class to improve students’ intercultural competence. We should make great efforts to combine related cultural information with the text book and take advantage of various measures to mobilize students to acquire intercultural knowledge. Theoretically, the present study may serve as a starting point to later, possibly more sophisticated research on intercultural communication in the Chinese EFL context.