Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Along with the deeper development of globalization, communication betweendifferent countries, regions and cultures is more frequent than ever, which makesintercultural communication a major topic in this modern era. In addition, globalizationalso plays a significant role in promoting the internationalization of higher education inthe whole world: the development of modern technology, the improvement oftransportation condition and the popularity of Internet all together make overseas studyaccessible for students all over the world. In recent years, having overseas studyexperience becomes one important goal of many youths’ career plan. In pace with thedeepening of the reform and open-up policy, China’s comprehensive national strengthhas been improving on a fast speed, as long as the improvement of international status,which attracts more and more international students to further their education.Overseas study is an important indicator of one country’s internationalization levelof higher education. Therefore developing overseas study both at home and abroadbecomes a significant task for China’s higher education development. In recent years,the scale of China’s international students is on a steady increase. From the data issuedby the official website of Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, in2012, there were 328,330 international students from 200 countries studying in China,which increased by 12.21% since 2011. Chongqing, the newest municipality and thelargest city in Western China, has attracted many international students to study. Amongmany universities that accept international students in Chongqing area, ChongqingUniversity (CQU) is the most popular one for it is the only university that is under the985 Project. According to the official website of CQU, in 2013, all kinds ofinternational students include language students and exchange students in CQU reached1200, coming from 123 different countries.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
For international students, overseas study cannot only provide an excellenteducation but also broaden their horizons of the world. However, exposing in a brandnew environment may bring along many problems for international students, such aslanguage problems, financial and study pressure and cultural misunderstanding, whichcan all arouse a large amount of stress and lead to an unsuccessful adaptation of the newenvironment. Consequently, the intercultural adaptation of international students shouldbe addressed properly, especially under the vigorous promotion of overseas studiesnowadays. In the study of intercultural adaptation, scholars both at home and abroad havegiven some different definitions and classifications, which are based on their differentstudy purposes and subjects. Their studies have provided a solid theoretical foundationfor the current study. Compared with theoretical studies, empirical studies are relativelyless. In China, most empirical studies on intercultural adaptation concentrate on Chineseoverseas students, there are relatively few studies focusing on international studentswho study in China, especially in Chongqing area. This study investigates on CQU’sinternational students, which to some degree is a complement to the existing study onintercultural adaptation in China, and also can provide some reference to the futureintercultural adaptation studies.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Intercultural Adaptation
The process of choosing “intercultural adaptation”, the key term of this thesis, isdefinitely not an easy task. In this part, the author undertakes a comprehensivecomparison of “intercultural” and “cross-cultural”, “adjustment’’ and “adaptation” toillustrate the final selection of “intercultural adaptation” In the communication between people with different cultural backgrounds,“intercultural” and “cross-cultural” are often regarded as synonyms（Hu Wenzhong,1994）. In most theoretical researches they can be used interchangeably. Therefore mostresearchers pay relatively little attention to the difference between these two words.However, Gudykunst（1987）explains the difference from his perspective: Even thoughintercultural communication is frequent adopted to include all aspects of culture andcommunication studies, it majorly deals with face-to-face communication. One majorarea of research within this broad term is cross-cultural communication that involvescomparisons of communication across cultures. Moreover, on the one hand,intercultural communication pays attention to both the “interpersonal” and “interactive”aspects. It deals with interpersonal communication between people from differentcultures, and encompasses the areas of intercultural, interracial, and interethniccommunication. In contrast, cross-cultural communication places emphasis on the“interpersonal” and “comparative” concepts and focuses on the communicationbehavior differences between people from different cultural background.
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2.2 Searle and Ward’s Study on Intercultural Adaptation
In 1974, Berry and his colleagues developed the acculturation model, whichconsists of three parts: acculturation strategies; the precise changes in behavior or waysof life in acculturation and the stress caused by acculturation. Berry’s model has beenwidely quoted by later researchers (Sekaran, 1983; Arrindell et al, 1986; Phinney et al,2001; Lazarus, 2006.), which still has enormous influence on the theoreticaldevelopment of intercultural adaptation. According to Berry, “acculturation is the dualprocess of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contactbetween two or more cultural groups and their individual members. At the group level,it involves changes in social structures and institutions and in cultural practices. At theindividual level, it involves changes in a person’s behavioral repertoire” (Berry, 2005. P56)On the basis of Berry’s acculturation model, Searle and ward (1990) propose a newintercultural adaptation model and divide intercultural adaptation into two aspects:psychological adaptation and socio-cultural adaptation.
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CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY.....15
3.1 SUBJECTS...... 15
3.2 RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS.... 16
3.2.1 Questionnaire......... 17
3.2.2 Interviews ........ 18
3.3 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS...... 20
3.4 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE.... 21
CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ...... 23
4.1 GENERAL SITUATION ....... 23
4.2 ANALYSIS OF THREE SCALES..... 25
4.2.1 Socio-cultural Adaptation........ 25
4.2.2 Psychological Adaptation ........ 28
4.2.3 Satisfaction of CQU .... 31
4.3 CORRELATION OF FACTORS ...... 32
4.4 CORRELATION OF VARIABLES ........ 37
CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION ...... 45
5.1 MAJOR FINDINGS......... 45
5.2 SUGGESTIONS ......... 46
5.3 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH ......... 48
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 General Situation
In the first part of this chapter, the general situation of international students’intercultural adaptation in CQU is illustrated and three scales employed in the researchare examined in general. In table 4.1, S1 indicates the socio-cultural adaptation scale;S2 indicates the psychological adaption scale; S3 indicates the satisfaction of CQUscale. In the part of socio-cultural adaptation evaluation, according to the questions, theLikert scale is adopted. The full score of this part is 100, if the respondent gets a higherscore; it implies that he/she has a better socio-cultural adaptation. From the table above（4.1）, it is seen that the mean score of every item is 3.5907, while the total mean scoreis 71.814.The second part is focused on international students’ psychological adaptation.Very similar to the first part, this part also consists of 20 statements, each with 5 options.The full score of this part is 100, if the respondent gets a higher score; it implies thathe/she has a better psychological adaptation. According to the data listed above, themean score of every item in this part is 3.4663, while its total mean score is 69.326.
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Conclusion
As a competitive and advantageous destination for oversea study, China hasattracted more and more international students; therefore, this research is evoked by theincreasing demands from the rising number of international students in China. Focusingon their intercultural adaptation situation, this study has combined related theories withthe real situation of international students in CQU and a series of significant results areobtained.In spite of the fact that the adaptation situation is different from person to person,the general situation of international students’ intercultural adaptation in CQU isrelatively good: first and foremost, there is a positive correlation between socio-culturaland psychological adaptation. While in detail, international students’ socio-culturaladaptation is better than their psychological adaptation according to the research results.Among the four factors of socio-cultural adaptation, international students havebest social adaptation while relatively the worst study adaptation. For the socialadaptation, besides the food and hot weather, some students cannot get used to beingstared at or treated as foreigners. And some wish that Chinese students could makefriends equally, not only with students who can speak good English or from developedcountries. For the cultural part, some students are very sensitive to their cultural orreligious identity, when someone mistakes their origin or belief, they would feel upset,or sometimes offended. They think that Chinese should be more open-minded andtolerant to cultural difference.
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Reference (omitted)