Research On The Impact Of Educational Administrators’ Cross-cultural Communication Skills On Cultural Adaptation Of International Students In Chinese Universities

With the development of globalization,the international exchange becomes increasingly frequent,resulting in more and more international students coming to China for education.It requires Chinese universities to develop its degree of internationalization.In the meantime,the psychological problem caused by the cultural difference between student’s parent country and China draws high attention nowadays.Cultural adaptation can lead to anxiety and depression,which brings big challenges for international students in work and life.How to help international students better and faster adapt to the local,to become a globalized talent,means a lot for China’g international education business.During international students’ learning life in China,educational administrators have frequent direct communications with them.Whether educational administrators’ cross-cultural communication skills have influences on international students’ cultural adaptation is the major question in this research.The research carries out interviews with international students from one university in Beijing and questionnaires with educational administrators in this university.The interview themes are based on the U-shaped cultural adaptation theory and cultural dimension theory,to collect participants’ keywords in describing their experience in cultural adaptation in China and their evaluation about educational administrators.In the meantime,the questionnaire takes ’Awareness-Sensitivity-Adroitness’ as the module to evaluate the cross-cultural communication skills of the educational administrators in this university.It aims to know the current level of the educational administrators’ cross-cultural communication skills and to provide reference for Chinese universities for future training and development.The results show that the cross-cultural commutation ability of educational administrators is not very good.Although they are good at English,they are not very good in cross-cultural communication knowledge and techniques,which requires further training.Based on the interview results,it shows that cross-cultural communication skills of educational administrators have direct influences on international students’ learning experience on campus,which can have influences on their cultural adaptation as well.Therefore,Chinese universities should pay more attention on the training for educational administrators in cross-cultural communication skills,in order to ensure the smooth cultural adaptation of international students and their learning experience in China.