The Study On The Inter-cultural Adaptation Of The Ordinary Chinese Volunteer Teachers In Thailand

As China continues to grow, it has more and more frequent communications with othercountries around the globe on politics, economy, and culture. Language is the intermediate forany communication. The importance of Chinese language becomes more apparent as thecommunication activities grow. According to relevant statistics data, there are currently100million people learning Chinese in the world, and more than100countries have set up teachingfacilities for Chinese language at various level. In response to the growing interest in Chinese,Chinese government has implemented a set of active policies to provide good quality Chineseteaching resources to foreign countries. In2004, the “International Chinese Teacher VolunteersProject” was approved by the Ministry of Education, and implemented by the National ChineseOffice since26March2004. Among the countries that take part in the “Volunteer Project”,Thailand is the one that was sent most volunteers at the earliest point of time. Since the projectwas launched in2004, China has sent11batches of Chinese teaching volunteers. Up to2013, thetotal number of volunteers reached1,500. From these statistics, it is clear that the Chineseteacher volunteer project is growing rapidly. Out of these many volunteers, except ChineseConfucius College and Overseas volunteers, the ordinary Chinese teaching volunteers (OrdinaryVolunteers) come with the highest number and these ordinary volunteers have made significantcontribution to the development of Chinese education in Thailand. Nonetheless, at the same timeas the positive growth, the “culture shock” problem that the volunteers faced has increasinglybecome a concern.As one of the many Ordinary Volunteers for Chinese teaching, the author has personalexperience and reflection on adapting to the Thai environment. This study will investigate therelationship between volunteer Self-efficacy and inter-cultural adaption. Based on the results ofthe investigation, provide relevant suggestions and recommendations, so as to help the OrdinaryVolunteers to better and sooner adapt to the work and life in Thailand. It is the author’s hope that this could contribute to the improvement of the cultural adaptive ability of the OrdinaryVolunteers and the development of Chinese teaching and culture.This paper is divided into the follow five parts:Chapter Ⅰ: Introduction section. This chapter introduces the cause and significance of thetopic of this paper, and also describes the main contents and the research method.Chapter Ⅱ: Theoretical Basis. Elaborate the main thesis of this paper, such as "cross-culturaladaptation theory"、"self-efficacy theory", and describes current research scholars at home andabroad, and lay a solid theoretical foundation for later study.Chapter Ⅲ: Study Design section and ideas. Develop an appropriate questionnaire paperfor the survey, and proposed correlation assumptions.Chapter Ⅳ: Analysis of the results section. By analysis the returned questionnaires andusing correlation analysis software to the results, tested the hypotheses that presented in ChapterIII, finally draw conclusions of this paper.Chapter Ⅴ: Conclusion section. To summarize the results of the study, and put forwardreasonable suggestions to Ordinary Volunteers. Finally pointed out that the objective look at theresearch limitations.