culture shock

ESSAY PLAN
Essay Title In a global educational environment a key issue for international students is culture shock. Discuss.

Introduction:
1. Definition of ‘culture shock’ (International students and culture shock, paragraph 2).
2. statistics of ‘culture shock’( Foreign students Education and culture shock, FACTS AND FIGURES part, the first paragraph)
3. Topic state: this essay would mainly talk about two elements of culture shock, the first one is physical and psychological problems for international students; the second one is academic performance problems.

Main Body
1. Physical and psychological problem for international student. 1. (Foreign students Education and culture shock, McNamara & Harris, 1997) they showed that describe foreign students as young, well educated, highly motivated,….But some remain vulnerable to depression, illness and poor academic performance.
2. Foreign students Education and culture shock, Do foreign students suffer from poor physical and mental health?-
Psychology:
Ward pointed out that” the existence of a foreign-student syndrome characterized by vague, non-specific physical complaints” (1967) .
Physical:
Ward stated that “Overseas students may have no other source of help, and their beliefs about the causes and treatment of illness may differ from those prevalent in the host country” (1967).

2. Academic performance problems of overseas students and university Students:
A. English language ability: even when students more than meet entry requirement, they may not be familiar with technical terminology for a specialist subject area.
B. Social and culture adjustment:
a. the cultural distance between the sojourner’s culture of origin and the host culture (Ward et al.2001) P11
b. The students who maintain a relationship with their own cultural only and do not value or relate to the new, will experience high levels of acculturation stress. (Berry ,1997) P12
Tutors:
A. lecturers should incorporate the knowledge of the student’ native cultures into their class discussion as this could benefit everyone. (Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Network: Enhancing Series: Internationalization, November 2008)
B. to make the students feel more comfortable in discussing subjects with others that they don’t know.--> to build a considerable rapport with the group.

3. Solutions of overseas students physical and psychological problems. A. The problems exist in all young people, whether studying at home or abroad.(Furnham and Bochner, 1986)
C. Educational institutions have established orientation and counseling programmers for international students. Furthermore, the students form Tokyo felt no significant or enduring negative effects on study. (Nathanson and Marcenko, 1995)

4. Strategies from university and student themselves.
1. peer mentoring:
a. Help them study skills, details on subjects and assessment approaches.
b. Provide support for language difficulties and a social framework for studies.
c. LMBS proved this successful.
2. tutors could perhaps evaluate the strategies(such as: group work)

Conclusion: Culture shock is a key issue, but there are several relevant strategies could cope with this problem.