Study On Central Asian Students’ Cross-cultural Adaptation Status And Strategies In Xinjiang University

Since the 21 st century, with the continuous expansion of globalization, communication between different countries, regions and cultures have become increasingly frequent. The in-depth development of globalization also accelerates the internationalization of higher education. On the one hand, more and more Chinese students choose to go outside and study abroad; on the other hand, due to Chinese ever-growing comprehensive national power and international influence, more and more international students come to study in China. Xinjiang situated in the hinterland of Eurasian continent, bordering eight countries including Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other neighboring countries. Due to its advantageous geographical location and unique folk culture, Xinjiang has been attracting more and more international students from the world, especially the students from Central Asian countries. With the arrival of these students, their cross-cultural adaptation problems are constantly emerging. The issue of cross-cultural adaptation has turned into a realistic problem that Central Asian students have to confront with after they come to Xinjiang.With the guidance of cross-cultural adaptation theory, the author chose ninety two Central Asian students who came from five Central Asian countries in Xinjiang University as subjects and investigated their cross-cultural adaptation status from three aspects------ psychological, sociocultural and academic adaptation by combing the quantitative and qualitative research methods. The author also explored the major problems of Central Asian students in psychological, sociocultural and academic aspects and the correlation between their cross-cultural adaptation and cross-cultural adaptation strategies. Through the distribution of the questionnaires and the semi-structured interviews, the data were collected. Then, the data obtained from questionnaires were processed by statistical software SPSS 19.0, including reliability and validity check, descriptive analysis, mean analysis and correlation analysis, ect.The result shows that first of all, in psychological adaptation, a majority of Central Asian students have no depression, but there are still over one-fifth of the students who have different degrees of depression. In sociocultural and academic adaptation, the overall status of Central Asian students belongs to slightly difficult. Among the three kinds of adaptation------ psychological, sociocultural and academic adaptations, Central Asian students have the greatest difficulty in psychological adaptation and less difficulty in sociocultural adaptation. Their adaptation difficulty in academic adaptation is the least. In sociocultural adaptation, according to the degree of difficulty from the hardest to the easiest, the adaptation difficulty of the students is from language adaptation, cultural adaptation, service adaptation, environment adaptation, life adaptation, interaction adaptation in order; Secondly, in psychological adaptation aspect, the major problems for Central Asian students are: missing their hometown and family, having difficulty in accepting the new things and having trouble sleeping at night. In sociocultural adaptation aspect, the major problems for Central Asian students are: adapting to the unsatisfactory service, adapting to the traffic condition of Urumqi, understanding the local accent/language, joining in some social activities outside campus and communicating with people by using Chinese in daily life. In academic adaptation aspect, the major problems for Central Asian students are: having difficulty in participating in the academic activities and the academic researches under the guidance of mentor; reading Chinese publications, browsing Chinese websites and watching Chinese TV programs; listening to Chinese lectures and reading Chinese textbooks; Thirdly, among the four cross-cultural strategies------ assimilation, integration, separation and marginalization, integration strategy is the most preferred choice of Central Asian students, the next two strategies that the students favor are separation strategy and assimilation strategy, and marginalization is the most unwelcomed strategy. In the correlation between cross-cultural adaptation and cross-cultural adaptation strategies, there is no correlation between cross-cultural adaptation and assimilation strategy, cross-cultural adaptation and marginalization strategy. There is a positive correlation between cross-cultural adaptation and integration strategy, that is, the higher the students’ cross-cultural adaptation level is, the more likely they may adopt the integration strategy. There is a negative correlation between cross-cultural adaptation and separation strategy, that is, the lower the students’ cross-cultural adaptation level is, the more likely they may adopt the separation strategy.According to the research results, some suggestions are put forward for Central Asian students, teachers and related service personnel, university and related management institutions. And the limitations of this study and the suggestions for future study are also presented by the author.