Adeola Abdulateef Elega

1.6 Assumptions of the Study 
A major supposition to this study is that the main impediment to communication to 
most international students is language barrier. The study assumes that they try to 
cope with a lot of interpersonal communication strategies. This research presumes 
that the most used interpersonal communication strategy is nonverbal 
communication. This is because nonverbal communication is naturally more in use 
than verbal communication (consciously or consciously). The American Institute for 
Foreign Study highlights that international students should be “Learned to use 
nonverbal and verbal communication to overcome language barriers” (Tillman, 2011 
p.10).

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This study assumes that since this is the case as highlighted by numerous researches 
that international students use verbal and nonverbal cues to cope with language 
barrier, it would be imperative to see if there is a difference in North Cyprus. Since 
Nigerian students represent the population of international students, the researcher 
assumes that language barrier is an issue for most international student so results can 
liken to students representing other countries of the world in Eastern Mediterranean 
University, North Cyprus. The study assumes that Muslim girls are collected and 
reserved so coping with language barrier may be a bigger problem for them than 
others. The study also assumes that the intervention of the new media has really been 
impactful in coping with language barrier. A study in a Canadian university which 
sets to investigate how non-English students cope while searching information online 
posits that; 
Translation using machine translation (e.g. Google Translate) was reported as 
a language tool that was used most and was therefore identified as one of the 
coping mechanisms employed by international students in the linguistic 
related challenges they faced while searching for information online (Nzomo 
et.al, 2014 p. 2). 
Searching for information online is a very important issue to the primary reason why 
most international students study abroad. This study assumes that Nigerian students 
in North Cyprus use translation mobile apps to cope with language barrier in Turkish 
Republic of North Cyprus.