Cultural Adjustments

• Cultural Adjustment: what is adjustment? It means the changes we

have to do to live in harmony with people from other cultures.
• Someone who just arrives in a strange place often feels “like a fish out
of water”
• People living in a new culture have to make adjustments, which takes
several stages: honeymoon, culture shock, initial adjustment, mental
isolation, and acceptance and integration.(the first W-curve)
• These steps often make people feel as if they are riding on a roller
coaster.
• Culture shock: a normal feeling experienced by people who first come
to a new culture; a feeling of confusion and bewilderment, feeling
that everything is so different from what they are used to. This phase
should be faced and overcome by sharing it with f, riends and fellow
countrymen who have been in that place longer.
• Factors that may cause culture shock: language barrier, different
customs, problems in academic and social life, etc.
• Symptoms of culture shock: fatigue, feeling that everything in the new
culture is bad, headaches, bored.
• Cultural adjustment: to overcome the culture shock or mental
isolation, we should make adjustments.
• Try interacting with other people; the more you practice
communicating, the better you will get, and suddenly you will realize
that the problems are not as bad as what you felt in the beginning.
• Go out, and try new hobbies: sports, arts, gardening, joining book
clubs, or just taking walks in the city center/ downtown. You will see
that the world around you is exciting and full of interesting things
• Re-entry adjustment: there will come a time when you have to return
to your home country; your study has finished, your work is
completed, and you have to leave the new country to go back home.
• You will experience again the W-curve like the first time, but with
different feelings.
• The stages in the re-entry adjustment process are: acceptance and
integration (in the new country), return anxiety (still in the new
country) return honeymoon (in the home country), re-entry shock, re-
integration.
• Individual reactions. People may have various reactions to the
experiences of living in a new culture; they might have different
degrees and length of culture shock or depressions, and speed of
reaching the integration phase.
• The individual differences may be caused by several factors:
personality, educational background, length of stay, age, gender,
family support, etc.
• Some people may not experience all the stages of the W-curve, for
example refugees will not experience the honeymoon period.
• Can you think of other examples?
• Answer the questions below, and upload your answers to the
tutor the next day (you have 24 hours to do it)
• Do you think there are stages of learning a language? If so, how do
stages in language learning correspond to stages in the cultural
adjustment process?
• How might students decrease the impact of culture shock during
their stay in a foreign culture?
• What is the best way to prepare for life in another culture?