The summary of survey question by EAP4A students at Swinburne University.

The number of international students has increased worldwide. “Those students who decided to left their home countries and travel to other countries for the singular purpose of studying are exposed to some difficulties in any areas of their social and academic life”, Behadi&Ayad (2016/2017). Most of them are from Cambodia, Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, Columbia, Vietnam and Venezuela in Swinburne University, 4 males and 6 females from 18-25year old up. They “fact some emotional and physical changes by the reason of the different environment. In an untighten, those students have experience a common abnormality, it called “culture shock”. All of these international students are asked for getting over all those difficulties and try to adjust and adapt to the new environment, in order to build an adequate climate for the learning process. In this study, the researchers have assumed both qualitative and quantitative accesses to figure out the details bunch up along the interview and the questionnaire” Behadi&Ayad (2016/2017).

 Based on our survey questions, some students came to pursue their MA (master degree) or BA (bachelor degree) and some might came for a short course. As a result, they live accordingly to their study. If they do study a short term, they might live in a short period. Throughout the survey which conducted in the class there are 50% of students who are going to live for more than 10 months, while the other live less than 10 months and around 3 months, respectively.

 According to my recent survey about international students, living abroad, no matter living for 3 months or longer, facing culture shock is inevitable. As it is inevitable, they have to face and encounter it, in order to survive in a new land. Admitting to the information that I got from the other EAP4A class, most of them try to reach and keep in touch with their family to because when they do that they won’t feel lonely and they start to learn more about culture shock which make them feel more at ease when they meet it again. On the other hand, the rest of students would try harder to get use to the new environment. They won’t give up and get away from the problem, the more they meet it the stronger they will be. As long as they deal with it continuously, they will adapt to it quickly.

 In accordance with the survey, we can assure that learning English is difficult. A majority of people find out that it fairly difficult while the other think that it is extremely difficult, we want to find out more about why it was somewhat difficult for most of the students. Our result showed that the main reason they chose somewhat difficult, because most of the international students “has learned already some knowledge of the foreign country they are entering has probably using existing methods to learn the language” Tasks (2018, p.1). Indeed, a small part of those students mentioned that English is very difficult for them, by reason of English is not their first language. They also mention that listening and speaking in a new land is tiring. They usually have trouble understanding the lectures. There are ton of Australian’s slangs that they have no idea what it is about. Australian people speak very fast since English is their first language which make some international students difficult to catch up and it is even more difficult when they include slangs in their speaking. Some of those students might feel embarrassed when they can not understand and keep asking them to repeat. 

However, even though they caught a culture shock, most of them felt happy when they arrived in Australia, especially in Melbourne. Lenthall, Lindeman, and Muecke (2011, p.3) state that culture shock is divided into five stages and first one is called honeymoon stage which is the period that is surrounded by passion and curiosity for everything coming from missing culture and difference, and as part of the valuable experience. That is why they showed partly influences of honeymoon stage in the question of feelings. Also, this survey presented that most of them perceived the acceptance and the respect of local people. On the one hand, this result can be also considered as a effect of honeymoon stage. On the other hand, the acceptance of multicultural environment of Melbourne supported migrants to make them comfortable.

In summary, a majority of the respondents had a positive impression for entering the new culture, and they were always trying to accept difficulties of culture shock in Melbourne. On the other hand, these challenges were partly assisted by their mother countries' education for English and the preparation of Melbourne as the city accommodates many students coming from all over  the world. Furthermore, every student has been making efforts to be fit to live in here on their own way regardless of the feelings. 

Reference

Ø  Behadi. F & Ayad. S 2016/2017, "Those students who decided to left their home countries and travel to other countries for the singular purpose of studying are exposed to some difficulties in any areas of their social and academic life" <http://dspace.univ-tlemcen.dz/bitstream/112/11008/1/belhadi-ayad.pdf>.

Ø  Brown, L & Holloway, I 2008, ‘The initial stage of the international sojourn: excitement or culture shock?’, British journal of Guidance & Counselling, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 33-49.

Ø  Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering University of Washington 2018, “has learned already some knowledge of the foreign country they are entering has probably using existing methods to learn the language”,  Education Research International, viewed 22 September 2018,  <https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse440/12wi/projects/lingoimmersion/Tasks.pdf>.