Intercultural Adaptation: A Study Of Chinese International Students

With the rapid progress of communication technology and transportation technology, the worldwide phenomenon globalization has spread to the field of education. Globalization of education has provided many people with appropriate opportunities to study abroad in pursuit of advanced education. The emergence of huge quantities of international students can be the most obvious representation for globalization of education. China, as the largest developing country in the world, has achieved great progress and improvement in the past few decades. Chinese International Students, as the fast growing group of people all over the world, have attracted more and more attentions from academic fields. In order to further investigate the oversea life of Chinese International Students, this thesis develops an elaborate study about their intercultural adaptation process.Built on the theories of Kalvero Oberg's Culture Shock, Sverre Lysgaard'U-Curve Model, Yong Yun Kim's Stress-Adaptation-Growth Dynamic, John W. Berry's Acculturation Strategies, Yong Yun Kim's Structural Model and Stella Ting-Toomey's Antecedent Factors, the thesis conceptualizes two core terms,"Chinese International Students"and"Intercultural Adaptation", and puts forward three research questions which run through all over the thesis. First, what similarities and commonalities exist in the intercultural adaptation process of Chinese International Students; Second, what intercultural adaptation strategies have Chinese International Students chosen, and which is the most preferred one;Third, what internal and external factors affect strategy choosing? How do they affect strategy choosing?Seeking answers to the three questions, the author, employing both case study and survey study, respectively in forms of interview and questionnaire, investigates forty Chinese International Students who are studying or had studied in nearly all five continents of the whole world. Both qualitative data gained from the interview and quantitative data gained from the questionnaire have been elaborately analyzed by means of descriptive statistics in terms of frequency, percentage and mean. All theoretical and empirical results show that most subjects cannot avoid culture shock in intercultural adaptation and most subjects follow stages in U-Curve Model and processes in Stress-Adaptation-Growth Dynamic. Integration Strategy is the predominant intercultural adaptation strategy, Assimilation Strategy is the second preferred one, but Separation Strategy and Marginalization Strategy have fewer followers. All internal factors such as age of arrival abroad, length of stay, education level, foreign language level, adaptive personality, prior preparedness, motivation, gender, major and external factors interplay with each other to determine the whole intercultural adaptation process of Chinese International Students.