Adeola Abdulateef Elega

1.2 Motivation for the Study 
Culture shock gave me a hint of communication strategies people devise to cope in 
an environment that is different from where they are coming from. For a first time 
traveler to another country like me who had little time to read about the place I was 

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heading to, I had a kind of culture shock because a lot of pictures of so many things 
were painted on my mind and so many questions I asked myself. Where I was 
coming from was a multicultural background, but of course still similar because we 
have lived together for so many years. Even if not similar, they are usual in the sense 
that we are familiar with each other’s ways of living. In Nigeria, similar names to a 
particular item are found in different cultures and languages and gestures and 
nonverbal cues are close and almost same. Travelling to North Cyprus inspired this 
topic to answer the question of aside weather, clothing and food which are culture 
shock to me and many other immigrants, which ways have Nigerians here devise to 
live even with odds of language barrier? The journey to answer this question will 
examine if these communication strategies varies from individuals or they are 
general.
Communication remains very important in a formal learning institution like Eastern 
Mediterranean University, within the learning environment and even outside the 
learning environment. The question of what communication strategies Nigerians 
students devise to cope in this situation is a very important one to know. More so, 
unlike where Nigerians come from, outside classes what you hear people speak is 
English language or Broken (Pidgin) English which is a type of English dialect 
spoken in some West African countries and it is a creole because so many people 
from different ethnic group speak it. Also the location of the university can affect the 
language people speak as people may also learn to speak the language of the host 
community. The situation is very different here; aside what you hear inside classes 
which is English language, what we hear within the host community is a bit of 
dissected English language for the sake of business. If not, Turkish language is 
generally spoken. So all this makes me want to ask a lot of questions. 

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