Abstract
Although the scale of education for international students in China continues to expand, the adaptation situation of international students in China is not optimistic. They encountered various problems in the processes of psychological adaptation, interpersonal communication, and learning. In addition to the improving count of international students pursuing their degree in China, China needs the cross-cultural adaptation of international students to be given due attention. This study adopted qualitative research methods and used a university as the research site to conduct interviews and observations with 204 doctoral students studying in China from different disciplines and countries. A model of cross-cultural adaptation, the novelty of this paper, using an analytical and inductive method. Based on this, the cross-cultural adaptation state and technique of doctoral students studying in China were described using three levels of coding on the original data, and their cross-cultural adaptation model was created using the analysis and induction approach. For doctoral students, a model cross-cultural adaptation of T2 is established in this study as well as this study explains the model cross-cultural adaptation of T2 for the doctoral students in China. In addition, this study identified four main styles of cross-cultural adaptation, namely dissociation, defense, tacit, and learning. From the data collected in this paper, it can be concluded that most international students in China have some negative emotions such as anxiety and lack of confidence in the early stages of China, and most of the reasons come from language barriers.
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Bai, B., Ge, Y. & Li, Z. Psychological study of international doctoral students studying in China: cross-cultural adaptation. Curr Psychol 42, 32270–32283 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04133-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04133-4