Foreign Students and Strategies of Cultural and Academic  Adaptation Field Study in some Public and Private Universities

doi:10.21608/jssa.2019.56108

Foreign Students and Strategies of Cultural and Academic Adaptation Field Study in some Public and Private Universities

Document Type : Original Article

10.21608/jssa.2019.56108

Abstract

This research aims to reveal how foreign students adapt to
Egyptian society (socially and academically). It also aims to identify
the problems; they face in their new social and academic
environment.
Kim Yan Young’s Theory of Cross Cultural Adaptation was
employed to achieve the goals of this study. This theory asserts that
human beings have innate motives to adaptation, which considered
as the main goal of life. This adaptation to the social environment
occurs through communication. Another theory was employed in this
study, Tinto’s Theory of Student Departure. This theory states that
when students can’t adapt to their social and academic environment
that leads to their departure from universities and they also leave the
study.
The method of the study is the Social Survey Method, which
helped to determine the problem of research, as well as collecting
required data. It also used many tools to collect data like
questionnaire, which has been surveyed a sample of 263 foreign
students, as well as In-depth interviews with a number of foreign
students.
The most import findings are: There was diversity of sample’s
characteristics of nationality, age, gender, marital status and
academic specialization. The foreign students can adapt socially
through several indicators like communications with neighbors,
making friends outside university, understanding the Egyptian dialect
and the way they spend their time (travelling, going on a picnic with
friends). On the other hand they can adapt academically through
several indicators such as satisfaction of academic specialization,
interaction with university’s environment, participating in trips and
university’s meeting parties, participating in lectures, communicating
with members of teaching staff and making friends inside university.
As well as they have the ability of facing social and academic
problems, which they exposed to.