Foreign Students' Intercultural Effectiveness (ICE) And Its Relation With Their Life Satisfaction

Globalization has caused the study in cross-culture getting popular. However, the literature review shows that most of the studies focused on developed countries but less about developing counties, especially about foreign students between two countries. This research studied the intercultural issue of Chinese students in Malaysia as well as Malaysia students in china in terms of intercultural effectiveness (ICE), aim to analysis the influencing factors of ICE as well as the correlation between ICE and Life Satisfaction.The meaning of "ICE" is a kind of intercultural success or competency, including communication competency, dealing with psychological stress, relationship building competency, cross cultural awareness and cultural empathy competence. ICE in this research was assessed by modified questionnaires from Han's (1997) research, and Life Satisfaction was measured by scale designed by Ed Diener.This research includes two parts:study1 and study2. Study 1 is based on questionnaire to survey the condition of those Chinese students in Malaysia, and the valid questionnaires are 114; Study 2 was about Malaysia students in China and the valid sample was 223. Both studies showed that language ability and international interpersonal relationship had a significant relationship with ICE, meanwhile ICE has direct related with the Life Satisfaction.Finally this research also discussed about the methodology to improve foreign students' intercultural effectiveness, thus provide some practical implications to foreign student in cross cultural adjustment.