An Empirical Study On The Intercultural Adaptation Of International Students In Chongqing University

Along with the deeper development of globalization, communication betweendifferent countries, regions and cultures is more frequent than ever, which makesintercultural communication a major topic in this modern era. In recent years, China’scomprehensive national strength has been improving on a fast speed, as long as theimprovement of international status, which attracts more and more internationalstudents to China to further their education.Exposing in a totally new and different environment may bring along a lot ofproblems for international students, such as cultural shock, language barrier, etc.Consequently, the intercultural adaptation of international students should be addressedproperly, especially under the vigorous promotion of oversea studies nowadays. In1990,Searle and ward divided intercultural adaptation into two aspects: psychologicaladaptation and socio-cultural adaptation. On the basis of Searle and ward’s theory, thisthesis sets out to investigate international students’ intercultural adaptation inChongqing University (CQU) and its influencing factors by applying both quantitativeand qualitative researches.According to the research results, the general situation of international students’intercultural adaptation in CQU is relatively good and there is a positive correlationbetween socio-cultural and psychological adaptation. In detail, international students’socio-cultural adaptation is better than their psychological adaptation. For thesocio-cultural adaptation, international students have best social adaptation whilerelatively the worst study adaptation. As for the psychological adaptation, internationalstudents tend to adapt the best in conquering anxiety feelings while they are relativelysensitive to others’ opinions. The influencing factors of intercultural adaptation consistof maintenance of old habits, optimistic attitude, administration of InternationalStudents Office (ISO), teaching and study quality and living quality of CQU, which canexert different impact on international students’ socio-cultural and psychologicaladaptations. As for the different variables, major, study type and Chinese proficiencycertificate are most influential to international students’ intercultural adaptation.All in all, this study investigates on CQU’s international students, which to somedegree is a complement to the existing study on intercultural adaptation in China, andalso can provide some reference to the future researches on intercultural adaptation. Nevertheless, the management of international students used to focus on taking care ofinternational students’ life and study needs, but scarcely pay attention to internationalstudents’ intercultural adaptation. This thesis aims to provide some reference to theimprovement of international students’ intercultural awareness and interculturalcommunication competence. In addition, it also comes up some practical suggestionsthat may help the ISO staff to achieve an effective management and helpful assistanceof international students.