Coping with culture shock: a study of stressors, adjustments and stereotypes among chinese students at bangkok university

Language

From the third 10 respondents, their capacity of Thai and English are basically meet their common needs. Moreover, there is a need for improving Thai and English since their courses are getting hard and their local communication (with Thai) is getting more frequent in general.


However, some of interviewees are still poor in English or Thai. For those students who are poor in English, their GPA is not that high in general, or even very low. For those students who are poor in Thai, they are facing a difficulty in living and communication with local Thai. Many inconveniences are caused since their poor in Thai. Their capacity of Thai and English are highly depend on their involvement in study or local communication. Therefore, language is big stressor to them in both English and Thai.

Furthermore, friends and classmates’ helps are main method to cope with the stressor. They include Chinese, Thai and foreign students. For improving English and Thai, some interviewees choose to study Thai in language schools. Also, they learn Thai from their Thai classmates and friends in daily conversation. Besides, they learn Thai with local Thais as well such as retailers and neighbors. For improving English, Bangkok University’s classes are main place to learn English; also, communication with foreign students and Thai students, who speak English very well, is a way to improve their oral English. Moreover, textbooks, English movies, English books, English websites, English newspaper, and English magazines are popular methods to learn more English.

In this semester, I register in 6 major courses. Contents of those 6 major courses are quite different to previous courses. There are many major vocabularies are required and they are really hard to understand. Anyhow, a senior Chinese student helps me a lot to understand those major vocabularies. Also, some classmates help me as well. However, friends and classmates’ helps are limited, I have to read more books and improve my English for better understanding in major vocabularies (Li Wu).