Acculturation Strategies Among Chinese Students In the United Kingdom

Abstract

A survey conducted by the Council for International Education of the United Kingdom showed that most Chinese students prefer to spend time with people from their own country. This indicates that the situation of some Chinese students’ integration to the local social environment is not optimistic. This dissertation focuses on describing the problems that are encountered by the Chinese students in the United Kingdom. This passage holds the view that the major causes of the cultural maladjustments are the language barriers, social distances which are caused by the cultural differences and the different expectations towards the outcome of socializing. With Berry’s Acculturation Attitude Scale and his definition of the acculturation strategies, this passage also discussed about the Chinese overseas students’ acculturation strategies and categorized these strategies into different types accordingly. The most frequently used acculturation strategy is integration, with which the individuals maintain a high tendency of accepting information from both host and home cultures without showing a declined interest in their home culture. Therefore, in order to gain a better result of acculturation to the local culture of destination countries, helping the students to succeed in both socializing and academic goals, the paper holds the view that different kinds of preparations should be made in advance, and more attention should also be paid to the language skills training and the cross-cultural education.

Key words: Chinese overseas students; cultural differences; cultural integration; acculturation strategy