A Narrative Approach To The Identities Of Two Intercultural Learners

As the world keeps merging and the rush of going abroad keeps thriving, more and more people opt to go overseas to pursue further education, and international students have caught much attention from the field of cross-cultural studies. This research, choosing two Chinese overseas students who have gotten a master’s degree in an English-speaking western country as its research subjects, and the construction of identities in intercultural experiences as its main perspective, displays how cross-cultural learners build their multi-layered, multi-faceted new identities and how they gradually achieve the cross-cultural capabilities that this globalized world requires. Being a case-based research, it attempts to demonstrate through single cases societies’impacts on individuals, individuals’roles in societies, and the negotiations of the society-individual relationships. It is done through narrative analysis, which has a close relation to issues concerning culture and identity. What stand out in the narrating and re-narrating of overseas experiences are individuals’ constant pursuing of "self", their efforts in striking a balance between the push and pull of two different cultures, and the various meanings and fruits reaped from their cross-cultural new identities. Theoretically speaking, this research adds something new to the existing theories on intercultural learners’identities, and practically speaking, it has proposed several strategies that might be helpful to future overseas students who want to develop their cross-cultural capabilities.