The International Student and Culture Shock by ISSARAPONG TEMJAI

Rationale

104097721 — 2023-01-11 03:24:53 UTC

Nowadays, international students are from all over the world. They have different cultures and lifestyles. We believe living in a new city will make them suffer culture shock frequently and have some impact on them. As a result, we decided to make and conduct a survey about this phenomenon experienced by international students.

We would like to know, by doing the survey, the demographic information of the respondents regarding gender, age, hometown country, and nationality, and try to discover if these affect culture shocks in terms of intensity and duration . Furthermore, we plan to investigate from three aspects, including "the definition of culture shock", "the feeling when encountering it", and "how to deal with it" to know how they feel and what to do when they are faced with culture shock .

The purpose of our survey is for helping people to understand and deal with culture shock, that will make our lives more harmonious. We believe the survey results will show that we can feel the obvious culture shock. We believe that most international students will actively face and work hard to improve the cultural conflicts they face, not only in their classes and workplace but also in their daily lives.

Section 2: Data Graphs and descriptions

104097721 — 2023-01-11 03:26:03 UTC

Our team of three students interviewed 17 participants, focusing on "The International Student and Culture Shock". The method which was adopted for this research was descriptive-comparative research design. The data for it was collected with the help of survey with a questionnaire. We collected responses from Swinburne University of Technology for this study. The distributed design questionnaire consisted of 12 questions. The questionnaire has four parts, 1-personal data of respondents such as age, gender, national. 2-includes questions to analyze students’ understanding on culture shocks experience. 3-include questions to analyze students’ feeling on culture shocks. 4-include questions to collect how students will do when faced with culture shocks. The data collected is represented here in graphs and tables.

104097721 — 2023-01-11 03:26:56 UTC

Melbourne, as the second largest city in Australia, has a diverse and multicultural population. According to the statistical data from Australia Bureau of Statistics (Abs.gov.au. Retrieved 12 Oct 2021), more than 16 nominated ancestries were found living in Melbourne, which means that people from more than this number of countries gather in this city with their own different cultures. Faced with so many different cultures, can our international students, with their unique cultural backgrounds from their home countries, adapt to their new lives here? With this question in mind, we decided to make this questionnaire to investigate everyone's understanding and practice of culture shock. We interviewed 17 ELICOS students in Swinburne by face-to-face. The questionnaire includes both closed-ended and open-ended questions.

First at all, we found that the respondents did not know the definition of "culture shock" very well. Although they could write down the simple meaning of culture shock with our tips, some of them still did not give any answers. Meanwhile, to help respondents understand the meaning of culture shock, we gave the stages of culture shock in the questionnaire. According to Oberg (1960), culture shock has 4 stages and the feelings of different stages are generally affected by the different times of arrival in the new environment. However, from the survey results we found that there was no match between the stage respondents thought they were in and the time they felt culture shock.

Additionally, a majority of international students’ experience in Melbourne is language. They feel excited but sometimes language is still a problem for them like a barrier because sometimes they didn’t understand what people say or don’t know how to continue in conversation. According to Bilton (2018) it can be difficult for international students to interact with and communicate with peers in their mother tongue when they are also worried about seeming foolish if they say somethingincorrectly, can't correct a word, or are otherwise unable to express themselves.

We all recognize that most international students have a very positive attitude toward culture shock and that is a very good sign for international students to be able to break through culture shock,” Stay positive, surrender to the good vibes and you will get the most out of your experience abroad”( AsiaExchange 2017). Moreover, most of them already know how to deal with these problems. They planned to be social, make new friends, communicate with family or friends, do some activity, and try to make themself comfortable in a new country as much as they can. Lastly their suggestion also reflects their knowledge and great strategy to cope with their culture shock problem such as ignoring them and letting time do the process. In conclusion, most international students have great well-known about culture and how to manage them but there are still few students who still don't know how to deal with it yet.

104097721 — 2023-01-11 03:27:31 UTC

Our survey and investigation gave us insight into understanding how international students manage culture shock. Following the completion of this research, we found a number of intriguing findings.

According to the survey results, most of the students already know how to deal with culture shock, but there were some students who still are not sure of the ways to deal with culture shock. First, we recommend international students be positive, and think positive. Maintaining a positive attitude helps reduce stress and positively impacts well-being. Once happy with life, culture shock will not be as hard as it used to be. Second, we suggest to keep an open mind and to learn new things from the new culture. The fear of experiencing culture shock should not be a deterrent from traveling or studying abroad. It is importnat remember that culture shock is inevitable and happens to everyone (Thomson, 2022). It is essential to not be afraid to experience new culture, as this will make it easier to understand the culture of the new environment. After that, it will be easier for international students to adapt to the foreign culture and merge their lifestyle with the host culture to make a life happy in a new country. Even though it might be hard from the beginning, everything will be fine after things become more familiar over time. Itis imp[rtant tobepatient. Finally, universities could support students by offering social activities and more frequent orientation sessions. In conclusion, it is important to remain positive, and keep an open mind to be better able to overcome the experience of culture shock, and take advantage of any support the university offers.

Stages of Culture Shock

104212155 — 2023-01-26 23:12:28 UTC

The question “Culture shock includes 4 stages, which stage do you think you are in now?” is about which stage the interviewees think they are in. From the chart we can see that we have four choices, including honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment and adaptation, to choose. 5 interviewees chose “Honeymoon”, that means they probably feel excited with culture shock. 7 of them choose “Negotiation”, that means these students maybe feel confused and uncomfortable with culture shock. And the rest of interviewees are in “adjustment” and “adaptation”. This mean they are faced with culture shock more sensibly. The purpose for asking this question is to understand what stage the respondents are roughly at.

Attitude Towards Culture Shock

104097721 — 2023-01-26 23:16:18 UTC

From the pie chart, it can be seen that most people have a positive attitude toward culture shock. 75 % have had a positive experience of culture shock. In contrast, almost 20% have a negative attitude toward culture shock. This might be because they have a negative some negative experiences that have made them uncomfortable. However, an equal number of respondents have felt abandoned and neutral which is a culture shock of 12 % respectively.

The Time When You Experienced Culture Shock

104212155 — 2023-01-26 23:18:31 UTC

The pie chart illustrates the period of time that that it took for students to experience culture shock. We found that most of respondents had experienced culture shock in a few day ago. This might be that most of them who have culture shock are students who just came to Australia not long ago. On the other hand, no one had experienced culture shock in three to six months. And the rest, around two to three people had experienced culture shock in one to three months.

Type of Culture Shock You Experienced

104212155 — 2023-01-26 23:21:48 UTC

From the bar chart, it can be seen that people have experienced language more than attitude to life 2 people. In addition, an equal number between living habits and shopping habits at 5 people. a minority of respondents are eating habits at 3 people.

Feelings of Culture Shock

104212155 — 2023-01-26 23:24:10 UTC

From the bar chart shown that most of respondents are very positive. It is clear that most international students are feeling excited to experience or had experienced culture shock with 9 students and some students have curious feeling toward culture shock but they are also feeling accepting in the same rate with 7 peoples. You can see that facing culture shock won't be problem to most of international student, with the positive feeling will come with great energy to deal with any problems that they are facing in the moment. On the other hand, there are few students who are not feeling well that include Anxios 4 people, Depressed 1 people, and unconfident 1 people to exprience or had exprienced culture. shock.

Strategies to Deal With Culture Shock

104212155 — 2023-01-26 23:25:31 UTC

This question asks about strategies for dealing with culture shock. Firstly, nearly 90 percent of students (15/17) choose to make new friends. Then more than 45 percent of students (8/17) choose to communicate about their problems with families and friends. In addition, 4 of the interviewees choose to join clubs and organization and seek help from university. Finally, the rest of them choose to focus on sports, enage in campus activities and other things.

Suggestions

104203324 — 2023-01-26 23:43:59 UTC

In this chart was an opening question but this will be shown into 5 main suggestion for other students that including nigoatiation, fix the problem, ignore it, be possitive, and no idea. You can see in the graph that most of them suggest to be possitive and fix the problerm when you faced with culture shock.Small part of them suggest to ingore the feelings.

Definition of Culture Shock

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The bar chart illustrates the information about a sentence that respondents define as culture shock. A majority of respondents said they don't know.

Example of Culture Shock

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This question shows the respondents’ experiences of culture shocks. Their answers were varied. First at all, 6 of respondents think the language is the most challenge experience for them, including cannot understand others saying and speaking too much English. Then 5 of respondents think the lifestyle is different from their countries, such as shops closing time, tips meaning or clothing. In addition, compare with their countries, 2 of respondents think the payment habit is discriminate. Furthermore, the other 2 of respondents think weather here is unpredicted. Finally, the rest of respondents have other kind experiences.

General Questions

104097721 — 2023-01-30 03:35:57 UTC

We start the survey with three general questions: gender, age, nationality.

Firstly, the donut chart shows information about gender. More than half of the interviewees are female and one-third of the interviewees are male. Secondly, the bar chart shows the number of students' nationality. It can be seen that all of the respondents come from Asia. One of the respondents is from Saudi Arabia, two people are from Vietnam, four people are from China, and an equal number are from Cambodia and Thailand for ten people. Lastly, the pie chart illustrates the percentage of the age range. More than 10% are 25-30 years old. Over one-fifth are more than 30 years old. Less than 30% are 17-20 years old. Over 30% are 21-24 years old.

104212155 — 2023-02-02 12:11:23 UTC

Asia Exchange. (2017). 8 tips on how to prevent or deal with culture shock. https://asiaexchange.org/blogs/8-tips-prevent-deal-culture-shock/

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2012). 2021 Census Community Profiles: Greater Melbourne. https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/community-profiles/2021/2GMEL

Bilton, I. (2018). 5 points of stress for international students – and how to overcome them. Study International. https://www.studyinternational.com/news/5-points-stress-international-students-overcome/

Oberg, K. (1960). Cultural Shock: Adjustment to New Cultural Environments. Practical Anthropology, os-7(4), 177-182. https://doi.org/10.1177/009182966000700405

Thomson, A. (2022). 7 Ways to Cope with Culture Shock. GoAbroad. https://www.goabroad.com/articles/get-a-grip-the-secrets-of-coping-with-culture-shock