A Study On Adverse Cross-cultural Adaptation

Foreign teachers are continuously introduced into domestic colleges and universities since the reform and opening-up. They have injected new vitality into the higher education of our country, promoting the improvement of teaching quality. Foreign teachers working in China mainly contact with Chinese students and a cross-cultural adaptation relationship is built between them. Studies about this relationship have been mainly focused on foreign teachers’ adaptation to students, which is strangers’ adaptation to the mainstream culture, while ignoring people’s adaptation of the mainstream culture to the foreign culture. The thesis focuses on Chinese students’ adaptation to foreign teachers, which is people’s adaptation of the mainstream culture to the foreign culture, called adverse cross-cultural adaptation, a new perspective in the research field of cross-cultural adaptation. Such research can extend the connotation of cross-cultural adaptation and provide help for developing English major students’ cross-cultural competence.The thesis is based on Ward’s cross-cultural adaptation theory and Oberg’s culture shock theory. By means of questionnaire, classroom observation and interview, the thesis explores the general adaptation situation of English major students to foreign teachers and the factors that influence students’ adverse adaptation from the perspective of adverse cross-cultural adaptation. Corresponding solutions will be put forward according to unadaptable situation and influential factors. Statistical tool SPSS will be used to analyze the collected data.Through the research, the characteristics of students’ adverse cross-cultural adaptation to foreign teachers are: compared with sociocultural adaptation, the general adaptation situation of learning aspect and psychological aspect is better, yet still not very good. The three aspects of students’ adverse adaptation: psychological adaptation, learning adaptation and sociocultural adaptation need to be improved. On the one hand, students’ adverse cross-cultural adaptation is influenced by internal factors such as personality, personal cultural knowledge and communication skills and psychological health. On the other hand, external factors have also played a significant role, such as social support, cultural distance, and tolerance of foreign culture. The thesis suggests developing students’ adverse cross-cultural adaptation competence, from the perspective of consciousness, knowledge and behavior.