| Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this study investigated Indonesian students' communication behaviors within academic settings where English is the target language. These behaviors were analyzed for regularities and consistencies in terms of cultural postulates, ends, and means. The study identified cultural transfer as an analogy of linguistic transfer and its relevance to interculture as an analogy of interlanguage, to acculturation, and to intercultural communicative competence.; The qualitative data consisted of interviews with Indonesian respondents on the Bloomington campus and observations of their academic activities, as well as interviews with native speakers as debriefers regarding those activities. A survey grounded in the ethnographic findings was then administered to three groups of respondents: Group A, sixteen Indonesian visiting professors to Indiana University, Bloomington; Group B, twenty-one Indonesian students on the Bloomington campus and Group C, 100 Indonesian students on campuses across the U.S. to determine the extent to which the three groups shared the same postulates, ends, means, communication problems, and communication problems within academic settings. The survey also served as a check on the ethnographic findings. The survey data indicated that the ethnographic findings were generalizable to the national sample.; In the respondents' perceptions, Indonesian traditional culture, such as family-orientedness and seniority taking precedence over knowledge, is reflected in the Indonesian education system, and this affects the quality of education. In practice, the system does not provide students with skills for critical thinking, writing papers, making oral presentations, and participating in group discussions. The respondents asserted the importance of teaching those skills in the general curriculum and of incorporation of cultural understanding of English speaking people into English curricula in Indonesia.; The respondents ranked the following academic routines from the most to the least difficult: writing research papers, making oral presentations, participating in class discussions, using body language, working with Americans, asking questions in the class, competing with other students, talking with American instructors in the class, and consulting American advisors. They also ranked the following communication problems from the most to the least complicated: language problems, thinking in terms of Indonesian culture and applying it to American situations, cultural problems, lack of cultural knowledge; and understanding American attitudes, customs, and social conventions.; The study concluded that the respondents developed various degrees of cultural transfer vis a vis language transfer in their communication within academic settings. Cultural transfer is a strategy of functioning in the target culture and is part of acculturation, characterized by cultural fossilization, cultural abandonment, and cultural enrichment. Cultural transfer is a sociopsychological process, bidirectional, similarity- or difference-driven, internal or external, positive or negative, fixed or temporary, conscious or unconscious, minimum or maximum; and is part of intercultural communicative competence. |
