Circumstantial Factor Homesickness

4. The Circumstantial Factor of Homesickness 4.1 Changes in Relationships

“Moving physically away from one’s support network leads to changes in the relationships that had developed.” “All of the subjects stated that they developed relationships with others who were studying abroad, someone from either their own or another country” (p.12) Whereas developing relationships with people in the host country and having opportunities of L2 communication might “play an essential role in the development of L2 proficiency” (Goodwin & Natch, 1988, cited in Tajima, 2016, p.112), the new friendships can be cause homesickness since most new relationships that learners developed could be with people who cannot speak and understand their L1. Moreover, learners

“Cultural shock is precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse” (Oberg, 1960, p.177). That is, “cultural shock is that emotional, psychological, cognitive, behavioral, physical impact caused by the situation where a person needs to adapt to a social system which he/she cannot utilize their previous knowledge or experiences” (Yokota and Shiratsuchi, 2004, p.88). Students are expected to adapt to the host culture after overcoming cultural shocks. Berry (1992, cited by Yokota and Shiratsuchi, 2004) divided the attitude of acculturation into four types: separation, assimilation, marginalization, and integration. First, “separation” means that students keep their home culture, and disregard for the host culture or interactions. In this case, students feel comfortable to be with people who are from same country, the usage of L1 would be increased. Second, “assimilation” means that students emphasize the host culture or friendship networks rather than their own culture. When students go back to their home country after studying abroad, this “assimilation” can cause a problem about their sense of self. Third, “marginalization” means that students keep a distance from both home and host culture. In this situation, students would be struggle to find their identity or their sense of self. Lastly, “integration” means that students get interested in both home and host

Tajima (2016) found that “homesickness was negatively correlated with all aspects of while-abroad language contact” (p.111). Regarding this result, Tajima introduced one suggestion which is “language contact during the study abroad could have led to reduced homesickness as learners were able to communicate and interact with people around them” (p.117). However, this assumption seems oversimplified because it refers to only interactions, which are speaking and listening contact even though language contact includes reading and writing contact as well. Van Tilburg et al described the frequency of homesickness. “In the episodic homesick, periods of homesickness are predominantly reported at the beginning and the end of the day. Moreover, they occur more frequently during mental (rather than physical) and passive (rather than active) tasks” (Van Tilburg et al, 1996, p.903). Mental and passive tasks are required to use L2 much less than physical and active tasks, which mean there would be the difference of the amount of L2 usage depending on what kind of tasks students are doing. Izaki (2012) created a simple diagram called “the change factors about the spectrum of homesickness” (p.328) based on previous studies as shown in Figure 1. It is found that homesickness could influence in a student’s usage of L2, and homesickness can be caused by various situation in