Anxiety And Uncertainty Of Chinese Students Abroad In Communication With Host Nationals

China had become the country sending the most students abroad. By the end of 2007, the number of Chinese students studying abroad had reached more than 1,210,000. There are so many Chinese students studying and living abroad, do they have problems communicating with their host nationals? There are two research questions in this thesis:(1)What are the major aspects that Chinese students abroad think are affecting their levels of anxiety and uncertainty when communicating with their host nationals?(2)How do Chinese students abroad cope with high levels of anxiety and uncertainty?The thesis is divided into three chapters. After the introduction, Chapter One discusses dimensions of culture, intercultural communication and explains two important terms anxiety and uncertainty, then introduces Berger & Calabrese's Uncertainty Reduction Theory and Gudykunst's Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory; Chapter Two is concerned with the methodology used in this thesis. The subjects in this research are ten Chinese students in the UK and ten Chinese students in Korea. The instruments used in the study are questionnaire, digital diary and interview via video chat on MSN (Microsoft Service Network); Chapter Three presents and discusses the results; Then major findings, implications, suggestions and limitations for further research are described in Conclusion.Foreign language competence is the aspect that is greatly affecting British group subjects and Korean group subjects' levels of anxiety and uncertainty. Host nationals' attitudes play an important role in affecting the subjects' level of anxiety in both groups. The results from British group and Korean group regarding the levels of anxiety and uncertainty affected by cultural differences are quite different. Chinese culture is characterized by collectivism while British culture by individualism; Chinese culture is high-context culture while British culture is low-context culture. The British group subjects perceive great difference between the host culture and the home culture which leads to high level of anxiety and high level of uncertainty as well. In contrast, the subjects in Korean group find that the two cultures of China and Korea are very much similar because Korean culture is also characterized by collectivism and it is high-context culture too. The similarities between Chinese culture and Korean culture greatly affect their level of uncertainty but not their level of anxiety.Chinese students abroad consciously or unconsciously make psychological adjustment such as developing intercultural awareness, being mindful, having positive expectation and tolerating ambiguity to deal with high levels of anxiety and uncertainty. The majority of the subjects argue that more contact with host nationals greatly reduce high levels of anxiety and uncertainty. The quantity of the contact with host nationals has a great effect on reducing the levels of anxiety and uncertainty, however, the quality of the contact with host nationals seems more important to reduce high levels of anxiety and uncertainty. There is a natural way to deal with high levels of anxiety and uncertainty-intercultural adaptation, i.e. the subjects' levels of anxiety and uncertainty decrease over time.Online research can be done at low cost, over long distances without the restriction of countries, subjects' locations etc. To a large extent, online research explores a new way that enables more people in China to make Chinese sojourners and immigrants in other countries as subjects being investigated in intercultural communication, so first-hand and reliable information can be collected.Since pronunciation is a prominent problem Chinese students abroad have that results in high levels of anxiety and uncertainty, foreign language teachers and administrators in China should be fully aware of the importance of teaching pronunciation and pay more attention to pronunciation training. Intercultural training should be carried out by universities or relative departments before Chinese students go abroad, especially to help them with psychological adjustment and improvement of intercultural communication competence. The training can assist Chinese students to adapt to the new environment more quickly.