Southeast Asian International Students Adjusting to Jordanian Universities: Views From the Field

Familiarity as a Family

“…In this case, language use is the main problem as Weiss and Ford (2011) argued that speaking English underpinned the sense of "otherness" of non-Malays, leading to less intimate interaction between Malay students and other Malaysian students from the different ethnic background, while abroad. Similar to findings from the West, Alazzi and Al-Jarrah (2016) pointed out that the Malaysian students in Jordan preferred to interact with co-national friends or other international students who had the same language, culture, and beliefs. They found that the students sought emotional support from co-national and Southeast Asian friends rather than local students.…”

“…Thus, as previously mentioned, the term "familiarity as a family" was introduced to describe students' close friendships when they are far from home. The concept of familiarity as a family offers some valuable insight into the concept of familiarity discussed in the studies of students living abroad (see Ahmad et al, 2014;Alazzi & Al-Jarrah, 2016;Prazeres, 2016;Weiss & Ford, 2011) as well the studies of family and friendship.…”

The Relation of an International Student Center’s Orientation Training Sessions with International Students’ Achievement and Integration to University

“…Other studies conducted on international student achievement show that although the international students face difficulties such as English proficiency, adaptation to new culture, housing, etc., they could still be academically successful (Berman & Cheng, 2001;Hartnett, Romcke & Yap, 2004;Mlynarczyk & Babbitt, 2002) because of adjusting strategies related to academic skills, motivation, and effort (Stoynoff, 1997). On the other hand, according to Alazzi and Al-Jarrah (2016), Southeast Asian undergraduate students from Malaysia and Indonesia attending universities in northern Jordan experienced academic problems as they had stress from studying abroad, leaving their families behind, fearing whether they can meet academic goals, and losing all that is familiar such as language, culture, friends, and food. For this reason, Koç, Avşaroğlu, and Sezer (2004) and Tutar (2002) stated that achievement of the international students who do not receive help from the university is low compared to the international students who benefit from the services of the university.…”

“…Esentürk-Ercan (1998) stated that international students face problems that were caused by stress during their transition to a new culture. Other points that were addressed are the socio-cultural integration of the international Asian students (Li & Gasser, 2005), the psychological integration of the international students who study in the U.S. (Zhang & Goodson, 2011), the socio-cultural problems of the international students (Alazzi, & Al-Jarrah, 2016;Kıroğlu, Kesten, & Elma, 2010), international students' problems and their academic achievement (Alazzi, & Al-Jarrah, 2016;Chen & Razek, 2016;Eze & Inegbedion, 2015;Kılıçlar, Sarı, & Seçilmiş, 2012;Shafaei, Nejati, Quazi, & von der Heidt, 2016), social support and integration of the Turk origin students who come from European countries to Turkey (Traş & Güngör, 2011), organizational integration of the university students (Can, 1996), international students' social adjustment and institutional attachment (Hwang, Martirosyan, & Moore 2015;Kaczmarek, Matlock, Merta, Ames, & Ross, 1994;Schartner, 2015), the integration and communication problems of the students who come from Turkic Republics, Turkic and relative communities to Turkey (Çöllü & Öztürk, 2009), and the effect of the orientation training on international students' achievement (Koç, Avşaroğlu & Sezer, 2004;Tutar, 2002).…”

I am a Muslim and Asian Woman in the United Kingdom

“…Most of the existing work on international students in higher education is concerned with their sociocultural adaptation, social network, emotional and physical wellbeing as well as academic adjustment (Alazzi & Al-Jarrah, 2016;Gomes et al, 2014;Leong, 2015;Maundeni, 2001;Sandel, 2014;Smith & Khawaja, 2011;Sung, 2021;Swami et al, 2010). However, there are limited research that focuses on the culturally diverse subgroups of the international student population.…”