Research On The Chinese Sojourners’ Cross-cultural Adaptation In Confucius Institutes

The purpose of the study is to assess the status quo of the Chinese sojourners’ cross-cultural adaptation in the Confucius Institutes and investigate the factors to their maladjustment as well as the strategies for their better adaptation. Under the guidelines of the theories of the acculturation and the multidimensional model of cross-cultural adaptation, three scales were applied to measuring their sociocultural, teaching work and psychological adaptation respectively based on the literature reviews at home and abroad.One hundred and eighteen subjects from the Confucius Institutes collaboratively established with the educational institutions in Henan province are assessed by the scales, and 94 of those participants respond to the interview questionnaire. When the data is computed and analyzed by SPSS and Excel, the results and findings are reported. 1) The Chinese sojourners in the Confucius Institutes have their unique characteristics:(a) there is a sharply disproportionate gender ratio among the group;(b) the disciplines of their academic background are imbalance and lack of diversity;(c) the majority sojourn less than one year abroad;(d) half of the group have no experience of going abroad and TCFL teaching prior to the departure. 2) The Chinese sojourners have more difficulty in sociocultural adaptation and most of them are in good mental health in terms of the depression measurement, although the feeling of loneliness and being stressed from time to time is reported. At the same time, they behave more tolerant to the cultural uncertainty both in life and at work, while they are not satisfied with the work performance and their needs at work are not met to some extent. 3) The findings of the factor analysis firstly indicate that the psychological adaptation is not significantly related to the other two dimensions, which is different than the previous studies in this respect. Secondly, cultural distance has an important impact on their cross-cultural adaptation, more specifically, on the psychological dimension. Thirdly, there is no significant difference in the responses to the variable of sojourning length. Last but not the least, the academic background and the experience of TCFL teaching surprisingly have no influence on their cross-cultural adaptation, and the experience of going abroad only is significant in sociocultural dimension. Speaking of the previous training experience, a deviance is found out and there is significant difference between pre-departure cross-cultural training and intercultural courses taking. 4) Three strategies are advocated to tackle these adaptive problems.At last, its implications, limitations as well as suggestions are put forward for future study.