This chapter describes the background of the study, the problem statement, the purpose, research questions, and the significance of the study, also the delimitations and definitions of terms. Those sections aim to explain the interest of the researcher on cross cultural communication and adaptation steps of undergraduate International Cooperation and Development Found (TaiwanICDF) students.
Background of the Study
Wagner (2004) noted in “Globalization and Higher Education” that in globalization economic, cultural and political processes have an impact on research and higher education.
As globalization is encircling our living condition, it is also demanding more and better professionals, thus companies are determined to use the new talents in their benefits (Brown, 2003). Recently, jobs are demanding for candidates with higher educational level (The White House, 2014); therefore higher education and job opportunities are interrelated to each other.
As remarkable changes are happening rapidly, and, also, needs of people, Brown (2003) stated that middle class families are more concern on better higher education, and get better knowledge and skills advantages for getting better job opportunities. For this reason, students are taking new risks in going to study in different parts of the world in order to develop professional competencies. The Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs) were developed in order to decrease the poverty level of the world by the United Nations in 2000. So the MDGs are demanding more and more well-prepared professionals to help to accomplish those goals, because in a globalized environment there are different ways to deal with a problem. On the other hand, globalization is making traditional markets get mature, and emerging markets to expand themselves (Peters & Laljani, 2008), and for this reason people are getting interested on study abroad in order to get a global perspective. Currently, engineering, logistics environment, education, nursing, cosmetology and hairdressing, and, vehicle maintenance and repair, have become more popular among study abroad students (People’s Daily Online, 2009).
The potential of any kind of education program is to reduce the gap between people and promote equality on opportunities, and also to benefit the world (The spencer foundation, 2010). In consequence, international agencies such as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), United State Agency for International Development (USAID), International Cooperation and Development Found (TaiwanICDF), among other agencies, give
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opportunities to developing countries citizens to study undergraduate, master, and PhD degrees by giving scholarship to study abroad; or even specializations on certain areas that might help to develop their own countries. As a result, the opportunity to study abroad has increased. On the other hand, the interest of people for studying abroad has been influenced by the need of contributing to solve complex problems of the world (Ashman, 2013), such as economic crisis, water crisis, animal extinction issues, climate change, among others. In order to reduce these problems, students need a global perspective that will be gained by studying abroad (Ashman, 2013).
A lot of countries in Asia provide different types of programs to international students;
Taiwan is one of these countries. The Ministry of Education of the Republic of China (2014)
“considers international cooperation and collaboration a cornerstone of its efforts to embrace internationalization, especially for institutions of higher education”, therefore the number of international students in Taiwan has increased from 26,488 in 2006 to 64,558 in 2012.
Official Development Assistance (ODA), or foreign aid, is defined as “voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another” (Foreign aid, n.d.), but it also includes technical cooperation. Different entities, nowadays, exist to support the foreign aid as the United Nations, Regional Development Banks, and others institutions, as the World Trade Organization and the European Union. Those institutions help less developed countries to achieve their Millennium Development Goals.
As part of those institutions, TaiwanICDF is an organization that was founded on July 1, 1996, and its mission is to “work for Humanity, Sustainable Development and Economic Progress” (Lee, 2014, p.165). TaiwanICDF is a bilateral organization that assists countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe financially and technically. This organization enhances these countries by its four core programs; (1) banking and finance to reduce poverty and develop their living conditions; (2) technical cooperation in agriculture, healthcare, private sector development, information and communication technology, and environment protection to increase their economic growth; (3) international human resource development by upgrading the society to advance economically and socially, but also to pool potential human resources given them scholarships; and (4) international humanitarian assistance by providing emergency aid and reconstruction assistance to nations that are affected by natural disasters (Lee, 2014).
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The objective of the international education and training program of TaiwanICDF is “to help the partner countries to cultivate and develop a talented pool of human resources”
(TaiwanICDF, 2014a). To achieve this objective, TaiwanICDF gives professional workshops, scholarships on higher education, and cooperate on training projects in association with international organizations. TaiwanICDF started providing higher education scholarships since 1998; see Table 1.1 and Table 1.2, respectively; and nowadays is working with 17 universities within Taiwan, which offer 28 different programs in different trends, to attract international students (TaiwanICDF, 2014b).
Table 1.1.
TaiwanICDF Alumni 1998 - 2012
Year Undergraduate Master PhD Total
1998 0 4 0 4
Year Undergraduate Master PhD Total
2011 47 0 3 50
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The scholarships conditions are to fill the online TaiwanICDF application, documents proving the nationality of the applicant such as passport or identification card, English translation of the highest level diploma and grades, a copy of the English proficiency certificate of the applicant, such as TOEIC or TOEFL; TaiwanICDF medical report, two letters of reference, and any other documents that can be requested (TaiwanICDF, 2014c).
Therefore, the opportunity for studying in Taiwan is equal for all of the applicants, and for this reason a lot of international students come to study their undergraduate, master or PhD degrees with TaiwanICDF scholarships. Taiwan is prepare and is willing to help developing countries with education; therefore TaiwanICDF is providing “each year, scholarships to around 182 new students” (TaiwanICDF, 2014a).
Problem Statement
Opportunities to study abroad provided by international institutions are welcome by different citizens; however the cross cultural adaptation is not taking into account till the citizens arrive to the new country. Even the opportunities are excellent for every student, some factors might affect them. One of them is the adaptation to a foreign country. Since those students come from different part of the world, the culture in the host country is different. Because of culture differences, getting adapt to a different environment might be a problem for them. For this reason, when expatriates start to live in a different environment, they look for similar or familiar customs (InterNations, 2014).
Matsumoto and Yoo (2006) gave a definition of culture, which is “a meaning and information system shared by a group and transmitted across generations” (p. 235);
consequently, “culture is learned through perception” (Chaney & Martin, 2007, p. 6).
However, perceptions, even in the same culture, are not the same for every individual.
Therefore, for persons from different cultural background are even more different, making intercultural communication a difficult process. Chaney and Martin (2007) suggested that as culture involve norms, rules and roles, so this will affect the coding and the decoding of messages. For this reason, this is the first impact on undergraduate TaiwanICDF students while adapting to a Taiwanese culture.
Culture shock, expressed as the feeling of being insecure, anxious and being lost, is commonly view as a normal process of adaptation to a new culture (Adler, 1975; Arensberg
& Niehoff, 1964; Foster, 1962; Gullahorn & Gullahorn, 1963; Lundstedt 1963; Oberg, 1960, as cited in Lynn, 2011). Consequently, most international students face it while living in
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Taiwan due to the differences in values, behaviors, customs, laws, language, among other issues. Stroebe, van Vliet, Hewstone and Willis (2002) suggested that international students have adjustment difficulties that are associated to culture shock, so it will affect physically and psychologically TaiwanICDF students.
Park (1938) stated that “the social function of communication seem to be to bring about and maintain understanding and cultural solidarity among individuals” (p. 187). So culture, according to Singelis and Brown (1995), affects the individual psychologically, and consequently the way the individual communicates. As different cultures communicate with each other, this will bring to the acculturation process confusion and conflicts (Park, 1938) due to language, traditions and experiences. For example, Taiwanese can understand English;
however their proficiency level is very low in comparison with China, the Philippines and South Korea. According to Pan (2013) high school students’ score was 582 points in the English proficiency test, which was higher than college and universities students, whose average was 504 points in 2012. On the other hand, some undergraduate TaiwanICDF students from Africa and The Caribbean are native English speakers, but Latin-American countries got low proficiency English level (McHugh, 2013). However, the Latin-American students that come to study to Taiwan, as a requirement to get the scholarship, and as mention before, a moderate level should be proven. Depending on the university and the programs offered by them, a score for English is settled and required. In most cases, more than 800 points in TOEIC or more than 80 points in TOEFL is required. When comparing the English level of Taiwanese and the English level of foreigners this means there is a big gap of almost 300 points.
For this reason, some Taiwanese lack of confidence for speaking English due to different reasons that involve culture issues and methods of teaching at schools. In one classroom can have up to forty to sixty students (Lin & Warden, 1998), making the learning process less effective or the attention from the professor to the students unequal. Taiwanese culture involves the Confucian culture, so for them [“Silence is gold, a real man should be good at thinking, but weak at speaking, keep your mouth shut but your eyes open, keep silent unless you can burst on the scene like a bombshell”] (Lin & Warden, 1998), and for this reason Taiwanese lack of confidence whenever they want to speak or when they should speak.
Ruben and Kealey (1979) expressed that “communication determines the individual’s ability to interact”, so “intercultural communication is the absence of cultural adaptation” (as
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cited in Lewthwaite, 1996, p. 169). Taiwanese population has their own communication principles, and foreigner students are not aware of it when they arrive in Taiwan, so intercultural communication will become an issue for both, Taiwanese and foreigner population.
As Taiwanese are learning English to communicate with foreign population, these undergraduate TaiwanICDF students are also required to study Chinese language in order to communicate with the Taiwanese population and to show respect for the culture. Due to the quantity and non-alphabetic system of the Chinese language, Chinese is a challenging language to learn (Luo, 2013). Consequently, those students experience two types of language anxiety; learning anxiety and survival anxiety (Schein, 2002); therefore learning a new language can affect negatively the acquirement of a foreign language (Liu, 2006).
Because of the anxiety feelings of not getting Mandarin-Chinese, those undergraduates are still talking in English while communicating with locals, or still gathering with their own cultural background.
Since there is a relation between language and culture, the process of adaptation to the Taiwanese culture of these students might be affected depending on the area that those students are living. In the capital city the communication might be better, because English understanding is better, but in the central and south Taiwan communication problems will be more common.
Purpose and Research Questions
A lot of studies have been conducted to study acculturation, or the adaptation of foreign students, especially Asian, African and Latin American in other cultures, such as in the United States, Australia, England, among other countries (Chirkov et.al., 2008, Constantine et al., 2004; Carlson & Widaman, 1988); however, undergraduate students have not been studied related to cultural shock based on cross-cultural communication and their adaptation in Taiwan.
For this reason, the purpose of this study is to explore and describe the opinions, expectations, and feelings of TaiwanICDF undergraduate students about their communication problems and the steps they took, or keep taking, to get adapted to the Taiwanese culture. In consequence, based on the background of the study and to fulfill the research purpose, the following research questions were developed:
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1. How undergraduate students of TaiwanICDF do perceive they deal with the culture shock issue?
2. What steps do they perceived they took to adapt themselves to the new culture?
3. Is language perceived by them to be a problem for living or studying in Taiwan?
4. How do they perceive they handled communication problems?
Significance of the Study
The study contributes not only the students but also TaiwanICDF and Taiwanese population. Taiwanese population is very open to foreigners; however the language barrier is a constraint to communicate with each other. Consequently, the study suggests not only comprehension from the undergraduate TaiwanICDF students, but also from the population.
On the other hand, it also provides future undergraduate TaiwanICDF students some ideas about the daily experiences when they arrive in Taiwan. These experiences will enhance newly arriving students to learn more about the Taiwanese culture before landing.
Those experiences will give these new students reasons to learn the language a little bit faster to communicate better than the predecessors, who are having problems while communicating with the Taiwanese population in certain situations, such as in the traditional market, hospital, and other situations.
The ICDF managers are the closest contact to those students from TaiwanICDF; hence, the study will help those managers to understand more clearly the expectations, opinions and feelings from the actual students, so that ICDF managers and TaiwanICDF can find options to improve the communication issues for new undergraduate students to help them to adapt quicker.
Delimitations
The study focuses on cross-cultural communication and its impact on the adaptation steps of undergraduate TaiwanICDF students from Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean countries.
These undergraduate TaiwanICDF students are currently studying in Taipei, and have got a TaiwanICDF scholarship. The study focuses on students that got the scholarship in 2012 and 2013. For the study was required that those students which came in 2013 have at least six months living, continuously, within Taiwan.
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Basic Assumptions
As the study involved undergraduate students over Taipei that came on 2012 and 2013, differences on the acceptance of the Taiwanese culture between them were percieved.
The first assumption is that students that came in 2012 are now more adjusted to the Taiwanese culture, and their daily problems with communication are not as frequent as the students that came in 2013.
The second assumption is that between students from different background, but not Chinese speakers, who are studying in Taipei, encounter similar communication problems since they came to Taiwan.
Definition of Terms
- Adaptation steps: The psychological adaptation is defined as “the ongoing process , anchored in the emotions and intellect, by which humans sustain in the mental and emotional states of being and in their interactions with their social and cultural environments” (Miller-Kane Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health, 2003). Adding to the definition of adaptation steps, steps are defined as
“a measure or action, especially one of a series taken in order to deal with or achieve a particular thing” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2014), and define as “one of sequence of separate consecutive stages in the progression towards some goal” (Collins Dictionary, 2014). Consequently, according to the definitions, adaptation steps in this study is refer to the actions the students are taking to get more comfortable with the social environment in Taiwan, and how they handle communication issues according to their experiences. Adaptation also has to be aware of time and willingness for acceptance the new culture.
- Culture shock: is a term that cannot be defined so easy, because it involves subjective behavior. Oberg (1960), who first introduced the term of culture shock, defined it as “a “disease” suffered by individuals living in a new cultural environment” (as cited in Chapdelaine & Alexitch, 2004). Pedersen (1994) defined it as “the process of initial adjustment to an unfamiliar environment”. In 2006, Oberg defined culture shock as the “precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse”. Consequently, in this study, culture shock is referred to unsimilar issues experienced by the students.
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- Intercultural communication: This term is divided into two concepts;
communication and intercultural. Communication is defined by Samovar, Porter &
McDaniel (2009) as “a dynamic process in which people attempt to share their internal states with other people through the use of symbols”. Intercultural is considered as the singularity and the irreplaceable characteristic of an individual within a social environment (Fleuri, 2003). Therefore, cultural communication, or intercultural communication, within this study is used as the communication between different cultures, and the problems that it might involve.
- Perception: is defined as “the conscious recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli that serve as a basis for understanding, learning, and knowing or for motivation a particular action or reaction” (Mosby’s Medical Dictionary, 2009). In the study perception comprises the opinions, expectations, and feelings of the sample regarding to communication issues in their daily life.
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