Social Relationship and Language Barrier among Students

Muhammad Umar Farooq Department of Civil Engineering The University of Tokyo umar@ken-mgt.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Abstract There are many factors like language, nature of job, personal attitude and other cultural factors which affect the social relationship and it also becomes one of the important issues in Japan. In this paper, the author tried to evaluate these factors especially the language among four laboratories of Civil Engineering Department in The University of Tokyo. This research comes with very interesting facts that besides the language and nature of person, nature of research and academic degree also one of the important factor for social relationship. 1 Introduction Social capital is dependent on Language and culture as well. Effective communication of ideas and thoughts become difficult if language and cultural barriers exist, as these barriers are hurdles against proper and effective communication among individuals or groups2. Be a social is also very important part of our life because it is impossible to survive alone in this hectic and tough life. To survive a healthy life, we must keep balance among our working, family and other social life as well. Japan is very ideal country to live. Its very safe and peaceful country and peoples here are very honest and quiet as well. The uniqueness of the Japanese society makes Japanese language a heavily cultureladen one1, which contributes much to the language barrier between Japanese and foreigners. 1.1 Objectives Following are the focus of this study.. 1) Is language a barrier to make a good relationship? 2) Is a level of degree matters to being more social? 3) Which type of lab members are more social? 4) Foreigners are good in making relationship or Japanese? 5) Who is Central person? 1.2 Limitations a) Only four laboratory student members of Civil Engineering Department are considered for this Survey. i) Construction Management & Infrastructure Systems Laboratory (CMIS) ii) International Project Laboratory (I.P)

iii) Bridge Laboratory iv) Geotechnical Laboratory b) This is a questionnaire survey; we have to believe the answer as the respondent mention in the questionnaire except the universal known. c) We have to use some approximation and set a criteria as well based on the answers given by the respondents. Like in this case, the author set a criteria for knowing each other and use some approximation for knowing the language skills as well. d) It was difficult to have the questionnaire from each members of the laboratory but still author tried to have maximum answers and he achieved almost 90% questionnaire. 2 i) Procedure First of all, Author collected the members list of the mentioned four laboratories. ii) Questionnaire was made to know which students a person knows from the laboratories and Japanese language Skills & English language skills were asked in the questionnaire. iii) Data compilation and analysis of data is done by using netdraw. iv) Results and conclusion based on the data analysis. 2.1 Data Analysis Total number of students was 89 including 32 foreigner students as well. The author divided the language (English & Japanese) into three levels. i.e Beginner, Intermediate and Fluent. Then, it is further divided into Intermediate & Fluent into one category because the students who are even in intermediate level can communicate easily. The data was analyzed on netdraw software. Laboratory, Country, English Language Skills (ELS), Japanese Language Skills (JLS) and Degree Level were considered as attributes. The results can be analyzed based on Betweenness centrality, Closeness Centrality, Degree Centrality degree, Eigen vector Centrality etc. Where all above terms can be mathematically calculated by using formulas. Netdraw network diagram based on four different laboratories (colours) and also on betweenness centrality (size) is shown in the figure below.

3 Results The results are divided into attributes and average value of betweenness, eigen vector and degree is calculated based on attributes groups. As shown in the table below. Category Betweenn In degree Out degree Eigen ess* Vector** All 53.51 24.09 24.09 2.64 Foreigner 61.98 23.84 24.28 2.44 Japanese 48.75 24.23 23.98 2.75 Japanese Bigg. English 48.77 22.96 22.78 2.48 Japanese Good English 48.73 25.09 24.79 2.94 Foreigner Bigg. Japanese 69.21 23.89 24.39 2.40 Foreigner Good Japanese 52.70 23.79 24.14 2.50 Master 60.09 25.14 26.06 2.84 Bachelor 32.27 17.29 14.06 1.88 Doctor 44.17 22.86 23.43 2.35 CMIS 66.50 25.85 26.90 3.21 I.P 55.00 26.04 27.13 3.42 Bridge 48.17 24.23 23.98 2.19 Geotechnical 45.73 21.80 20.90 1.76
*Betweenness is the measure of nodes centrality in a network equal to the number of shortest paths from all vertices to all others that pass through that node. **Eigenvector is a measure of the influence of a node in a network. More Eigenvector means node is connected to more popular nodes.

1. From these results, it is clear that foreigner students have high betweenness as compared to Japanese students and average value also. But eigen vector value of Japanese is higher than foreigner students and average value as well. The in degree and out degree is almost same for the Japanese and Foreigner students. 2. Japanese with good English language skills have more eigen vector value. 3. The foreigner students who are not good in Japanese have less value of betweenness as compared to students with Beginner Japanese language skills. 4. Japanese students have almost same value of betweenness for different level of English skills. 5. Betweenness, Eigen vector value and degree of master students are higher than the bachelor and doctor students as well. Bachelor students have the least value. 6. Among the laboratories CMIS and I.P lab has higher values of these parameters and geotechnical lab has the least values. 7. One another thing the author noticed that Japanese students whose are good in English has almost knows averagely 5.75 number Foreign Students. 8. The Japanese whos considered to be Beginner in English language knows averagely 4.85 number foreign students. 4 Discussion and Conclusions

Is language a barrier to making a good relationship! As from the results, it is clear that Japanese students have almost same value of Betweenness with different level of English language ability. Its mean in this case foreign language does not affect the centrality of the Japanese students in the network. For Eigenvector, Japanese students with larger value are connected with most of the popular or central members. And also Japanese students who are good in English language have more Eigenvector value which shows that the students who can speak foreign language may have contact with the famous members in the network. The foreign students with less Japanese skills have very high value of Betweenness and more centrally located in the network. The reason may be that, mostly these students are Master students who have more social network. So this results shows that obviously language affects the level of relationship. For the Japanese they have almost same degree network independent on the language skills but the students who can speak foreign language are more centrally located in a network and have more social network with foreign students as compared with Japanese students For foreign students, language does not matter for relationship, level of degree and type of laboratory work matters for the relationship Is a level of degree matters to being more social! Yes level of degree matters for being more social, Results shows that Doctor students are less social in contact with the other students because of more burden of work. Bachelor students are less socially active because they are just entered in the laboratories or for research work, so they have less social network. Which type of lab members are more social! Type of laboratory/research also matters for being the social. Management laboratory and International Project laboratory members are doing research more related to management and social research topic, so they have more relationship. Geotechnical laboratory members are doing work on the experiment based; they have to do work in their laboratory, so they are less social Foreigners are good in making relationship or Japanese! Results shows that even foreigner students entered in the department just few months to 3 years before but still they are succeed in getting the high centrality in the network. Japanese students have less value of betweenness. But the Japanese students who are fluent in English, they had friendship with the most famous students in the network Central Person! By considering the results, one foreigner student with ID FMU has the highest value of Betweenness, Eigen vector and Indegree as well. When it is asked from him, why he/she has more friends he/she just mentioned He/she wants to be social and By chance in these laboratories they have more friends and also he/she actively participated in conducting this survey Second one, MO is a Japanese, he/she is senior and very active student and can speak English very fluently and try to have good relationship with others. She has second highest values of Indegree and Eigen Vector. Both of these students are belong to I.P

and CMIS laboratory. Another one is OS, he/she is foreigner student and very active and has second highest value of Betweenness. From above mentioned students, two are girls. So its mean its better for the girls to be more social and have central position as compared to the boys. Above results shows that the foreigner students are more popular and trying to have central position in connecting people. 5 Remarks There are many parameters in which the social relations matters like nature of work, level of degree except the language skills. But it mostly depends upon the nature/aptitude of the individual and the aptitude is usually built from the culture and the surroundings. I want to finish my discussion with a famous quote Where there is a will there is a way 6 Acknowledgement The author is very grateful to students of the Civil Engineering Department who participated in the questionnaire survey. The author is also very thankful to the Professor Petr Matous for his great encouragement and motivation for this interesting research. References 1) Japanese: A Heavily Culture-Laden Language By Fengping Gao 2) Language & Culture Barriers By Steve Jonathan, eHow Contributor