Chapter 4 Results
4.4 The Coping and Social Support in Response to Sociocultural Stressors
Two social-cultural stressors including difficulty in building friendship with locals
students and managing cultural differences in friendships with local students are shown
in Table 7.
Table 7
Coping and Social Support in Response to Sociocultural Stressors
Stressor Coping Social Support
Source Resource
4.4.1 International Students Struggled to Build Friendships with Taiwanese Students
Previous studies underscored making contact or forming friendships with host
nationals as one of the major sociocultural stressors encountered by international
students that might result in isolation, loneliness, homesickness, depression, frustration,
loss of status or identity, and feelings of worthlessness (Smith & Khawaja, 2011).
Furthermore, many studies have suggested that international students encounter
difficulties in establishing friendship with host nationals, even though they wish to do
so. Similarly, seven participants stated that they experienced this particular difficulty
in the early phase of their stay, or that they were even disconnected with local students
in social life during most of their stay. According to participants’ statements, their
capabilities or opportunities in establishing friendships with local students were
affected by a number of individual or contextual factors. The factors included age
(IS12), busy lifestyle (IS6, IS13), family in Taiwan (IS13), financial concerns (IS13)
(the individual factors), modest and shy local students (IS11), language barrier (IS11),
and a lack of opportunities to engage with local students (IS7, IS10) (the contextual
factors).
For me, it's the matter of age, the older you get, the harder for you to make friends. That's a fact. (IS12)
The only issue is that mostly Taiwanese are busy; I don’t see to make friendship from Taiwanese from [my program]. Because they are usually not available.
(IS6)
Maybe I’m not so sociable guy, I didn’t have many friends...I prefer more stay full focused on study...I cannot go outside with classmates, I want but I cannot, because on the other hand, there is time value for me to spend time with my family…I cannot spend money to go for drink, and I don’t have time too. But I realized it’s no good, because I need to be sociable to socialize with people, but I cannot. (IS13)
In my class, at first semester some classmates were very shy to ask me question,
think I am classmate and they can ask me…maybe they think I cannot speak Chinese, because once somebody doesn’t know I can speak Chinese, they really shy to speak English. (IS11)
Separated. I even don't know where they [international students] are. It's like we're in the same department but we're living in the different world…the more I get to Taiwanese life, the less international students you get. I haven’t seen them for a while, maybe a year. Foreign students and Taiwanese student’s comfort zone is really different. Wherever there are Taiwanese students, there won't be international students except me. (IS7)
Because for my program now, we have the farewell dinner last two weeks, but the dinner is only for international students, no locals invited, the locals have their own farewell dinner. (IS10)
It should be noted that there may be personal factors, such as age, busy lifestyles,
family, financial concerns, modest and shy local students, and language barriers that
contributed to the difficulties in building friendships with local students. It is worth
further investigating why international students lacked opportunities to meet local
students. If they are studying in the same campus, why might that be? The reports from
two participants (IS7 and IS10) might be able to answer this question. To fulfill the
goal of internationalization, establishing English-taught programs to recruit
international students with zero or limited Chinese proficiency has been one of the
most important strategies adapted by many Taiwan universities. While the small
number of new English-taught programs or courses accommodates a large majority of
international students, the majority of domestic students are still taking the existing
Chinese-instructed classes. For students in any level of study, class is indeed one of the
most important venues (if not the most important) not only in learning, but also in
social interaction. Separating international and local students into different classes may
greatly reduce the opportunity of interaction between two groups. The fact that there
were considerably more international students in English-language programs
inevitably facilitated the formation of an international student network, thus impeding
them from making friendship with local students. It can be deduced that the
characteristics of students in these particular courses and programs can decide whether
international students will be more likely to form friendships with local or international
students. For international students with sufficient Chinese language skills that were
capable of taking Chinese-instructed courses, they had more opportunities to establish
friendships with local students. However, on the other hand, they might alienate
themselves from other international students. Likewise, international students were
more likely to befriend more international students rather than local students, if they
take English-instructed courses. The following report from a participant who studied
in an English program confirmed this reasoning.
I would say that the most important part of my new friends (multinational) is my classmates, because they are exactly the same situation as I am…I believe my class is the most important part of my friendship network. (1S9)
4.4.2 Student Clubs and Dormitory Help Facilitate Friendships with Taiwanese Students
To assist international students with the formation of friendship, two student
volunteer groups in the university of this study organized campus activities in
collaboration with the International Office during each semester. A number of campus
social events and sightseeing trips were sponsored with an aim to increase interactions
and cultural exchange between international students and Taiwanese students. Do these
multicultural activities facilitate the formation of friendship between international and
Taiwanese students? The reports of some participants noted that these student activities
seemed to provide more recreational benefit and social contact among international
students instead of providing them with a platform to establish friendships. As some
participants reflected, these kinds of activities were not sufficient enough to foster
friendships between international and Taiwanese students due to two shortcomings.
times during the semester, thus the amount of interaction was very limited. In addition,
though many students joined these activities, most of the participants were often
international students, particularly exchange students, while there were only a few
Taiwanese students.
Student Ambassadors, International Youth, they would have a lot of events organized for foreigner, and I get to meet a lot of people, basically mostly foreigners not Taiwanese…I participated some events from department, so I met some Taiwanese people at that time. However, it is inadequate in forming friendship…I know SA would organize some events but they only have three or four times in semester, in other times they would not really [organize these events]…I mean it's a good thing to have events, I’m not saying it's useless. (IS7)
Those people [exchange students] who came here just for a semester, they wanna see as much as possible, so I believe this kind of trips, I really feel it suits for them, because they don’t have to find much information about it, they just sign up and go. Very convenient for them…I wouldn't say it's not good for regular students, it is. I’m just saying that I've never used that because I had plenty of opportunities to go out with my friends from my class and people from dorm.
(IS9)
I remember there was a welcome party, and we had the buddy program. We knew each other but kind of just friend, we just added our Facebook and even later we didn’t remember who [they] are. (IS10)
Yet, in comparison with multicultural activities which were only held occasionally,
student clubs where members regularly meet to share common interests, and thus
contribute to more amount of interactions, were considered a better way of developing
friendships with local students. The selected university in this study had more than 100
student clubs, with a majority of members being Taiwanese. Additionally, the
university hosts a club fair each semester, which serves as an important opportunity for
international students to “window-shop” for clubs that interest them. Though three out
of seven participants reported that they seldom or never established friendship with
locals due to different factors, there were four other participants who successfully
formed friendships with local student by joining clubs.
Three months I guess, yeah because it is a big major as well. So I knew no one.
But I joined the school club…There’s club festival. A lot of booths…I visited the stands…I found some of my best friends from that club actually. (IS2)
There was this club fair, that was an experience because different with our cultures, in my university they don’t have clubs… so I had a chance to meet people in stands, asked information, what was club and that kind of stuff…I just walked by and I saw the people, getting info from them, that’s how I joined trip with my first three Taiwanese [friends] from our club. IS6
If you want to meet people in campus and there is no common activity to do it, it’s very hard to make friend with locals…When I saw the booth I was
excited…As I said this is one of gateways, one of entrance things to meet local
get to know them and you can create friendship. As I said, if you meet them once, it is kind of hard, maybe you will add them Facebook, later and you will chat, it’s kind like we are not that close, why are you talking to me? (IS3)
I think the clubs are really helpful to meet people…I have joined the jazz club…I join the club and I have some friends from that club. (IS11)
In addition to student clubs, the university dormitories provided another context
for international students to form friendships with Taiwanese students who resided in
the dormitories.
Beside of that, in dorm you have roommates, you can go somewhere with your roommate, he may bring his friends…my previous roommate he's got friends, he invited me for dinner, and there were six of his friends, two of them were very keen, they went to gym once or twice a week, and sometimes we went together, so they added me on Facebook, we went to another gym in Gongguan, there's a Fitness First [a health club], they brought two of their friends. (IS9)
My roommates help me a lot doing my papers. I often ask them, how to say this and that in Chinese…Yeah, in my room, I ask them quite a lot. They help me to correct my paper. And they often ask me about their English project as well. (IS2)
Right now my roommate is Taiwanese, she also helps me a lot. If I have difficulties in Chinese, she helps a lot. (IS1)
4.4.3 Manage Culture Differences in Cross-Cultural Friendships
The stressors found in previous studies as summarized in Table 1 were related to
managing the culture differences between host and home countries: unfamiliar cultural
norms, values, and customs; conflicts between host standards and those of home
countries; and lack of knowledge of the host culture. Similarly, one participant who
befriended a greater number of local students added that he encountered challenges in
maintaining friendships due to cultural differences in ways of interaction and
communication. In the beginning, he did not realize it was the culture differences that
affected his friendship; he was confused with what had happened. In the process of
coping with the challenges to recover friendships, he had learned to be more
open-minded and improved his listening skills. At the same time, he emphasized the
importance of patience by giving more time to local friends who were encountering the
same challenge.
Sometimes my culture and Asian are different, we Latin American are very open and straightforward to say the thing, like face to face. Taiwanese they try to avoid confrontation, and also subtler…It’s difficult, because the same thing you are from different culture creates some stress at some point, like situation I probably make mistake mostly because of culture difference; probably not break the relationship but your relationship gets affected in some cases. (IS6)
In some occasion, it affects your friendship. But in same time I’m learning and expanding my friendship. I think what makes me overcome them is that I am always open to learn from people, listen and speak, and give time to them. (IS6)
To the researcher’s knowledge, aside from a culture workshop offered by campus
counseling services each semester, there were no other professional education or
resources in campus (e.g. courses, workshops, discussion groups) designed to improve
the cultural knowledge of local and international students. It is without surprise that
the participant did not report seeking or receiving social support in his case.
4.4.4 Relations with Co-nationals Are Either Distant or Bonded
In most cases, international students are unlikely to encounter sociocultural
stressors with regards to relations with co-nationals. Therefore, there was no report
regarding this problem. As noted in Section 2.5.2.2, some researchers have found that
friendship with co-nationals had some short-term benefits for international students in
adjusting to a new environment, although it could hinder them from building
friendships with host nationals, thereby affecting long-term adaption. Since co-national
friendship is one of the important social support sources for international students, it
was interesting to ascertain the kinds of roles that these kinds of relationships played
in the acculturation process in Taiwan. In this study, both distant or bonded relations
were reported by the participants. It is surprising to discover that some participants
intentionally distance themselves from co-nationals in order to develop friendships
with domestic students or learn more about Chinese and local culture — a clear
deviation from the Functional Model which stated that co-national friendship aided
international students with affirming and expressing their cultural origins. These
participants revealed that while they did know other co-nationals, they were not
interested in seeking their company, and as such, would not actively seek other
co-nationals.
I try to stay away from Germans...If I hang out with Germans and speak German, then I can stay in Germany, what’s the point of coming to Taiwan?
there is one German classmate that I have, he is nice person but I didn’t really hangout with him, it’s not my interest. (IS3)
I didn't really want to make Japanese friends in Taiwan, because I really want to get into local life. (IS7)
I mean I know some Czech people but I don’t get in touch with them, I mean there's no point, I mean why? [It’s] not that I’m trying to avoid them, no, I’m just not trying to find them, if I meet anybody from Czech Republic, it's alright, we can go out we can chat, no problem at all, I’m just not trying to find Czech people on purpose. But I’m not like looking for Czech people for purpose, even though sometimes it's very nice to have like chats in Czech language. (IS9)
I didn’t feel it’s a great need. (IS5)
On the contrary, two participants reported experiencing assistance and friendship
from an active, well-organized student association formed by their co-nationals. The
association proactively contacted incoming new students from their own country,
offering assistance before and after arriving on campus which was very helpful to new
students in settling into a new environment. In addition, a participant reported that she
shared an apartment with a number of co-nationals. It was beneficial to her as they took
turns preparing meals that complied with their religion’s rules, and also assisted each
other in dealing with practical matters. In summary, this part of the research findings
is consistent with the results by previous studies pertaining to the short-term benefits
from co-national friendships.
We [co-nationals] are living together. And there are three more living in the same house. So we are very close friends just like family. When I need help they just help me. (IS11)
They [Indonesian Students Association] searched me on Facebook online…They contacted me…My Indonesian friend helped me to apply for the dorm. (IS2)
4.5 The Coping and Social Support in Response to