A Study Of Intra-cultural Adaptation Problems Of English Major Freshmen

Every year thousands of students go to other places to study, so naturally,cross-cultural and intra-cultural adaptation problems appear. From the review ofliterature at home and abroad, it is clear that cross-cultural adaptation problem is a hottopic, which is mainly researched by anthropologists, sociologists and psychologistsboth in and out of China. However, in foreign countries, scholars mainly focus on theadaptation problems related to psychology, while researches on language,interpersonal communication and living environment adaptation are rare. Most ofstudies home and abroad are on cross-cultural adaptation problems, and are aboutforeign students or workers who face adaptation problems while studying, working orliving in another country. Seemingly, China has the same research point on the studyof psychology.To freshmen, it is difficult for them to communicate while they come to a newplace facing so many students of different nations, with different backgrounds,different communication methods and different living habits. This thesis mainly doesresearch on intra-cultural or cross-regional adaptation problems. It mainly studiesinterpersonal communication adaptation problems while Grade2009English majorfreshmen came to study at Ocean University of China, and the data collection of theresearch went on for two whole semesters. It mainly does research on the problemsthat whether the freshmen met with interpersonal communication problems, whetherthey felt uncomfortable when they moved into a new environment, and the reasons ofthose problems. The research aims at finding out solutions to help freshmen improvetheir interpersonal communication. Therefore, these freshmen will adapt themselvesin the new environment quickly. Furthermore, advices are given for future freshmen to help them avoid many interpersonal communication adaptation problems whilecommunicating with others.This thesis applies both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methodincludes interview, questionnaires, and participant-observation. Quantitative methoddiscusses the interpersonal communication problems those freshmen met throughthree questionnaires by using data. Findings suggest that due to different cultures,personalities, family backgrounds, and living environment, these students had metwith different interpersonal communication problems. The author decides to find outbetter solutions for students to adapt to the new environment and improve theirinterpersonal communication.Since former scholars mainly did researches on cross-cultural adaptationproblems across countries, this thesis tries to do research from a new perspective thatformer scholars seldom do, and it researches students in China. It puts theory intopractice, and gets a conclusion that different cultures, personalities, familybackgrounds, living environment and so on will cause interpersonal communicationproblems. Based on this research, contribution has been made on solving freshmen’sinterpersonal communication. Besides, this research has also plays a meaningful partfor students to communicate with each other while they are facing interpersonalcommunication.