Survive Another Culture: Cross-Cultural Adaptation Of Foreign English Teachers In China

This qualitative study explores cross-cultural adaptation of foreign English teachers in Nanjing, China. During twelve semi-structured in-depth interviews and four participate observations, previous life with regard to cross-cultural experiences, expectations, cultural differences and everyday life difficulties of the respondents have been examined under the theoretical framework of expectation gap, cultural identity and identity transformation as well as cross-cultural communication and competency. This narrative inquiry shows how narrower expectation gaps contribute to cross-cultural adaptation, previous cross-cultural experiences promote adaptive initiative, and respondents with cultural appreciation possess bicultural identity that smoothens the transformation process as well as the communication modes of foreign English teachers with the host environment and the positive role of host language fluency in cross-cultural contexts.In this case, social adaptation does not spontaneously initiate subsequent to intercultural encounters, the progress often heavily relies on subjective factors, yet some of which do result from prior objective matters.