Making new friends: Social concepts of study abroad

Abstract

For the past few years, Asian universities have been trying to position themselves as a venue for study abroad opportunities. This is also quite true in Taiwan, wherein universities are exerting much effort in the recruitment of international students. Within the paradigm of internationalization, having international students in Taiwan is a way to promote communication, understanding, and friendship between other countries around the world.Moreover, it is hypothesized that successful internationalization is built upon the friendships that are form between student exchanges. In addition, with the current increased emphasis in student exchanges with mainland China, it would be quite important to determine the various concepts on friendship within these students. Therefore, the current study seeks to analyze the different insights between the Chinese and local Taiwan students' concepts on friendship.Using a mixed-method paradigm, 6 groups of volunteer students enrolled in a technical and vocational university in Taiwan participated in a series of focus group discussions. Afterwards, a survey was designed from the focus group interview results. The survey was then administered to 200 volunteer mainland Chinese and local Taiwan students. Statistical results show that there are both similarities and differences within the concepts on friendship. Local students are eager to make friends with their international peers, while majority of them thought primarily of the opportunity to understand a new culture. In addition, survey results also show that the highest factor is the social results; wherein the students' goal is to expand their world view and gain interpersonal relationship.

The role of personality and intercultural effectiveness towards study abroad academic and social activities

“…Actually, an early study by Bochner, McLeod, and Lin (1977) noted that there exists a sort of subjective hierarchy among the three groups, which is quite dependent on the type of activities being accomplished. Such notion opens up the discussions regarding the definition, concepts, and including the role friendship among the study abroad students (and the three groups; including the notion of in-groups and out-groups), which in fact have already become an inseparable part of the study abroad students' psychosocial adjustment (Glass, Gomez, & Urzua, 2014;Huang, Chen, & Ching, 2014;C. T. Williams & Johnson, 2011).…”

Study abroad tales: Experiences of international students in Taiwan

“…In addition, noting that making new friends is one of the primary goals of study abroad (Dewey, Ring, Gardner, & Belnap, 2013;Huang, Chen, & Ching, 2014), students also mentioned the buddy system assistance program; which is to assign a local Taiwan student to assist the foreign student upon arrival, as a good way to ease their transition. Furthermore, language seems to be an important bridge to successful integration into the society, while the presence of co-nationals further served as moderator for quick familiarization of the local culture.…”