Cultural Shocks

The purpose of this paper is to review recent research to investigate cultural shock on international students in Dublin. It will consist of three aspects. Firstly, to explore the stages of cultural shock. Secondly, to find out the ways to adapt to a different culture. Finally, to investigate experiences re-integration into home back. Research sources have collected from several databases which Google Scholar, EBSCO, UCD Library, Maynooth Library and DIT library.

Key Words: stages of cultural shock, cultural integration, international students, returning students, study abroad .

Stages of cultural shock: Culture shock has numerous stages. Every stage can be continuous or seem just at specific times. “Cultural shock stress responses cause

As mentioned in the (Zapf, 1991), there are some specific ways to adapt in different cultures which states that understanding of culture shock, awareness of danger signs, connections with local ethnic community, communication competence, analysis of culture bumps and using groups(pp.9-11). (Hendrickson et al., 2011) In this study, the researchers focused on how to make study abroad more successful, by making friends in the host country with people from their own country, from different countries and also from the host country. Configure these friendships may be intimacy plays a big role in the students satisfaction, lower homesick, and social bonds. According to (Winkelman, 1994) The components of cultural shock require alterations in view of an attention to cultural shock, the utilization of abilities for determining emergencies, and acknowledgment that some individual change and behavioral modification is major to determine and adjust the cultural shock (p.3). So the author writes that “This is not to say that an individual must assimilate, but one must accommodate(acculturate), understanding the local culture and the means of adapting effectively”(Winkelman, 1994, p.3). Further research (Zhou et al., 2008, p.8) showed the major way to adapt to new cultures are skill development of how to deal with stress and communication

The most important point for students is that they understand that their return include the difficulty of adapting to their home country similar to the first thing they faced when they arrive abroad (Young, 2014, p.4). According to (Wielkiewicz and Turkowski, 2010) there are positive effects and negative effects to study abroad. This study focused on the negative effects that affect the students after their return home, as well as comparing students who studied abroad and who did not do it. Also, (Butcher, 2002) pointed out that returning students have difficulties, and this research suggest some ways which can be alleviated. Moreover, it focused on the sadness as part of the re-entry process. (Butcher, 2002, p.3) conducted a number of interviews with East Asian students in their home countries, who studied at universities in New Zealand. He found that the grief dominated on returnees from several destinations. For example, re-adapt to live with their families under the same roof and this is the hardest case they faced. In addition, some of these students are expected will find better jobs and higher salaries when they return, and also speculated that their relationships and friendships continue as they were prior to their departure, but they found the opposite. Gaw (2000) found that returnees suffer from a high level of cultural