International students at Australian universities

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DateInternational students at Australian universities

Introduction

Australia is one of the most popular destinations for students, who wish to peruse international education from good reputable universities. There are about 200,000 international students enrolled in universities in all educational sectors. Most of the students experience cultural shock while adjusting with the Australian culture as they move to the new country. It has been observed that first year students lack experience in reading critically and understanding all the rules of the academic program. Universities need to be prepared to provide these new international students with proper support and guidance and enable them to obtain necessary social, academic and cultural competencies to deal with the cultural shock.

Discussion

When a person starts to live in a different culture, realizes that often does not understand the attitudes, customs and habits of the natives. Not only do they not understand them, but sometimes it comes to them as a surprise and they reject them. This cultural difference comes up to them as cultural shock.. Students from a different culture when try to adjust at a new country they go through culture shock. In culture shock, they see a complete unfamiliar environment when different cultural norms and values."Culture shock is caused by anxiety resulting from the loss of any sign, symbol or sign that we know to carry out social interaction" in (Ryan, 2002). Cultural shock might have many reasons:

the person who comes into contact with a different culture realizes that everything learned so far does not serve in the modern culture.

Failure to communicate: communicating everything in a new, language, gestures, symbols and style.

Loss of signs and codes: the symbols and codes that has always been used in a subconscious cultural environment must now be measured and controlled to be understood in the modern culture. Signs used in everyday life as when we greet, we present ourselves, how to behave in public, when to speak, how and when to tip, how to behave in a class, when and where to eat etc. should learn in the modern context. The ignorance of all this we can produce stress.

Identity crisis: the person feels lost because of cultural differences and you are evaluated in the host culture in a negative way because you feel angry, lost, stressed to much change. Ethnocentrism overrides any intercultural communication. This ethnocentrism brings out prejudice to the culture we are living right now

However, culture shock should not be considered only as negative but must be understood as a natural process and emotional occurs in the foreign speaker at the powerlessness of not being able to understand, control or predict the behaviors and behaviors natives.

It is difficult to define the exact culture of Australian universities as it comprises of people from over 210 different nationalities (Griffiths, 2004).. However, the core values of Australian culture can be defined as:

Everyone is treated with equality. Example, La Trobe has advocates, Academic Progress Committees, grievance procedures and an Ombudsman to give students with problems an opportunity to explain ...