1 Introduction
1.1 Rationale of the study
Today, the economy is developing at an astonishing rate. The development of the society makes the world much smaller than before. With such a circumstance, many Chinese people would like to go to foreign countries to pursue advanced education. Studying abroad gradually becomes an indispensable link in many young people’s life planning under the age of globalization. The blooming of studying abroad has opened a door to many countries and regions to communicate with each other. It provides basis for the spread of ideas and culture. It also let the students who come from countries without proper learning facilities obtain the necessary professional technical. To study abroad, coming into the local country, understanding another custom and culture, can broaden international students’ horizon, increase their experiences and enhance their cultural sensitivity. And it is extremely important to increase their experience. Cross-cultural contacting brings not only the feeling of novel and mysterious, but also varieties of precious experiences. Going overseas and living in a strange land and surrounded by a strange culture are serious challenges for all international students. Living in a totally different cultural environment means international students must make certain changes in the way of life or their thinking patterns. At the same time they must face all kinds of problems such as the pressure of academy and economy, the barrier of language, maladjustment to the climate and the diet, far away from relatives, friends or home. Even some international students are unaccepted by the local county or they have mental or health problems or they may sometimes face the racial discrimination. All these changes will bring psychological pressure to the international students, and not every student can overcome the pressure and achieve successful adaptation to the completely different cultural environment.
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1.2 Significance of the study
At present, there are lots of researches on cross-cultural adaptation in western countries. But most of the existing researches are on the basis of western countries’ data, especially the American data. The international famous comparative education expert P.G Altbach once said: “Most of the existing literatures are about the third world’s students how to adapt to the life in the industrialized countries and about the feelings they have when they come back to their home countries. There are also some other relevant problems. This reflects the problems that economic cooperation and development countries concern and are interested in. But they are just part of the problems international students have.” (P.G Altbach 1991) On account of the differences in cultures between Chinese and western countries, the results of western findings and literatures can not explain the adaptation problems of overseas Chinese students. In china, more and more researches about the foreign international students’ cross-cultural adaptation are springing up. And the existing researches treat the Chinese students abroad as objects. Such as Chen Xiangming studied adaptations of Chinese students in United States, Xu Guangxing discussed adaptations of Chinese students in Japan; Zheng Xue studied the adaptation of visiting scholars. But they are all from many aspects to carry on their studies. The study on their social etiquettes between Chinese and western students are quite few, and they are usually found in journals. As a result of that, the research about cross-cultural adaptation of overseas Chinese students from the view of the differences between Chinese and western social etiquettes provides a new theoretical perspective.
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2 Literature review and theoretical basis
2.1 Culture relativism
In the category of cultural anthropology, culture relativism is a very important item. It gives a new perspective to excavate the differences of different culture. Today, we have a widely used definition of culture relativism, it is “culture relativism involves: understanding another culture in its own terms sympathetically enough so that the culture appears to be a coherent and meaningful design for living.”(Greenwood & Stini 1997). According to its meaning, it shows that different culture has its own meaning. If people intend to study one culture, they must understand it in its own environment firstly. The key word of culture relativism is “understand”. Often it is not clear where to draw the line between two different cultures. Cultures are rather complicated. Later, some cultural anthropologists began to study ethnography. They do many experiments to confirm that people need objective descriptions to prevent the perils of ethnocentrism. Franz Boas in United States and Bronislaw Malinowski in Britain with some cultural anthropologists in twenty century conducted many empirical fieldworks. Culture relativism provides an effective way to help people know about different cultures. It also helps them know why people in different culture do things in their own way. Although the dividing lines among cultures are fuzzy, we can not treat all culture as morally equivalent. Having a better understanding of culture relativism is benefit from the insights of cross-cultural adaptability.
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2.2 Culture shock
Kalervo Oberg, the anthologist who first came up with the term “culture shock”. It describes “the sighs of anxiety that can occur when people bump into a new culture that presents very few familiar symbols or behaviors.”(Kalervo Oberg 1960) According to Kalervo Oberg’s understanding, the anxiety is resulted from losing all the familiar cultural hints. If it is treated accurately, the migrants can recover or adapt to the new cultural situation and feel at home. (Oberg 1960). Zwingmann and Gunn treated culture shock as homesickness, adjustment difficulties, uprooting to refer to the phenomenon of culture shock.(Zwingmann & Gunn 1983) Seelye adopted self-discovery shock, role shock, transition shock and culture fatigue to describe culture shock. (Seelye 1995) Caputo held that culture shock means when people visiting another culture, the feeling of estrangement or displacement he feels.(Caputo 1994) Barna suggests that culture shock to be one of the stumbling blocks in intercultural communication (Barna 1997).
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3 Methodology .......... 14
3.1 Research questions and research methods ...... 14
3.1.1 Research questions ............ 14
3.1.2 Research methods .... 14
3.2 Subjects ......... 15
3.3 Instruments and Data-collection ............ 16
4 Data analysis and discussions of findings .... 19
4.1 Differences between Chinese and western social etiquettes ......... 19
4.2 Causes for differences ....... 28
4.3 Strategies Chinese returnees take .......... 32
4.4 Main factors influencing cross-cultural adaptability ........... 33
5 Conclusions ............ 35
5.1 Strategies to improve cross-cultural adaptability ...... 35
5.1.1 Strengthen language training ....... 35
5.1.2 Create ways to know about culture ....... 36
5.1.3 Provide cross-culture psychological consultation ..... 36
5.2 Cross-cultural training ....... 37
5.3 Implication for second language learning ....... 38
5.4 Limitations .... 39
5.5 Suggestions .... 40
4 Data analysis and discussions of findings
4.1 Differences between Chinese and western social etiquettes
Based on the findings of this interview, the respondents have mentioned all together eight aspects to show the differences between Chinese and western social etiquettes. They are: ways of greeting, courtesy, addressing system, visiting, inviting, compliment and apologize, gifts-giving and receiving and table manners.It is well-known that, it is a custom to greet each other when people meet. And it is a one of the world’s people common etiquettes. It is a channel to show people’s kindness and politeness. Erving Goffman (1971), American socialist once argued that greeting is a sign and recognition of communication. And British anthropologists J.R.Firth (1972) said that greeting is the confirmation and recognition of communicative activities. It has a role of establishing and extending the relationships ( J.R.Firth 1972). There are two forms of greeting: verbal greeting and non-verbal greeting. In this study, the author needs to discuss the verbal greeting. The verbal greeting involves five categories. They are: wishing, caring, talking, addressing and praising.Greeting can be treated as the most common etiquette in our daily life. China and other western countries have many differences in this aspect. Although it is such a really small thing, it can show the big difference between two kinds of cultures. In China, when two acquaintances meet each other, they always say such as: “Have you ever had your meal?” “Where are you going?” or “Didn’t you go to work today?” and so on. These are the most ordinary ways to greet others in China, but if you use these words to greet foreigners, they must feel unwell. They must feel strange that why you ask them these questions and sometimes it may cause misunderstanding.
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Conclusions
As stated above, Chinese social etiquettes are quite different from those in western countries. These differences involves in many fields. Such as differences in cultural background, national identity, natural environment, ways of communications, social status and values can cause these differences. In order to overcome all the troubles in the course of cross-cultural adaptation, the returnees have adopted many strategies. Although they have received no trainings before they go abroad, they feel their way of adapting to the new culture and try to fit in it quickly. But as for cross-cultural adaptation, what strategies should people take to overcome the difficulties? These strategies should be systematic and specific. The aim of these strategies is to give international students some guidance and instructions. The second finding should be paid attention to is what are the implications for combining cross-cultural education with Chinese English teaching? These implications can give a pattern to Chinese English teaching in cross-cultural adaptation. At the beginning of the final section of this thesis, the author tries to focus on the strategies people should take in the course of cross-cultural adaptation firstly. After integrating these strategies, the author gives some ways to put the cross-cultural training into effect. Then the author comes down to the implications for ESL. At last of this section, the author comes up with the implications for English language learning. Then the author figures out some limitations of this thesis and at the end of this chapter the author puts up some ideas for the further study.
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The reference (omitted)