An Analysis Of Moderating Factors Influencing Acculturation Of International Students In Hebei Province

Acculturation has been a major subject in the field of intercultural communication.Scholars at home and abroad have carried on in-depth researches from differentperspectives. With the educational internationalization, and the rapid increase of theinternational students, the acculturation of international students has been paid more andmore attention to. To solve acculturation problems of international students in Hebei,factors affecting their adaptation need to be analyzed firstly. The present study analyzesthe moderating factors which have an influence on acculturation, based on Kim’sintercultural adaptation models and Warde’s theory on two-dimension cultural adaptation,and conducts an empirical study on the acculturation situation of international students inthree Hebei universities. The present study aims to find out the acculturation outcomes andtheir main moderating factors of international students in Hebei Province by combiningboth qualitative and quantitative methods.In the qualitative study, the interviews are taken on nine international students fromHebei University of Science and Technology. The interviews show their level ofacculturation outcomes and the moderating factors. Most international students can adaptto the life well in Hebei. They also suffer from different adaptation problems at thebeginning, but these problems are finally solved by themselves with support from avariety of channels. The social support has the greatest influence upon their acculturation.In the qualitative study, a questionnaire on moderating factors which have an influenceon acculturation is designed for the survey among60international students in HebeiProvince. It aims to find out the main factors influencing on the acculturation of Hebeiinternational students.The results from interviews and questionnaire survey indicate the main internal factorsinfluencing on the international student’s acculturation, which include personality,expectation and intercultural experiences. The external factors are social support, lifechange, length of stay and cultural distances.