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40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

qz.com

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Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#101

Post by xiaoma »

oblio wrote: post #77
habosa wrote: post #74

It seems obvious that a huge (and hard to solve) reason for this is simply language! There are many levels of language proficiency: Level 1: Can read and write it at your own pace Level 2: Can comfortably converse in a professional setting (little slang or cultural knowledge needed) Level 3: Can comfortably converse in a social setting (slang, faster speech, less clarification) Level 4: Can do all of the above passiv…

It's the cultural proficiency that gets you. By now I have probably spent 1000 hours learning (as part of a formal process), reading, listening, writing and speaking English. Probably a lot more, but let's go with that estimate. The actual language learning part was probably 20%, the rest was acquiring cultural references. I'm trying to do the same for French, where I'm probably around level 2 or 3, and damn, I had f…

> "It's the cultural proficiency that gets you."

Yes. This one of many reasons doing extensive reading of easy texts, children's stories and then later consuming TV and radio is so important. So many learners tend to take the approach of making a giant deck of flash cards or using an app like Duolingo and never get that much authentic input.

Going to school is probably the surest way to ensure that you do get all of the above, though it's not the only way. In the future, VR will give learners the quantity of practice and input that the world just doesn't have the patience to.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#102

Post by 1024core »

When I came to the US, I made an effort to reach out to Americans (in the dorms, in class, etc). I found that, after you remove the veneer of programmed culture and biases, under it we're basically all the same: similar goals, fears, aspirations, etc. I formed some very close friendships with Americans, and I'm still close friends with them 20+ years later.

My point is: as a newbie in this country, I had to make the effort; if I didn't do that, I would not have made those friendships.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#103

Post by tcbawo »

Bartweiss wrote: post #16

People should know the Quartz headline is wrong. Follow the source link and you find that 40% have no close American friends, which is different from "friends on campus". I checked the source looking for a baseline (how many domestic students have no close friends) and discovered that it was specifically about international students making friends with Americans. > "Nearly 40 percent of the survey respondents had no…

In general, I've found that people will not invest as much in a friendship given an upfront, known shelf life (duration of grad school, year abroad, etc.) unless they are bound by a similar constraint. How often does chatting with someone on a plane lead to a life-long friendship?

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#104

Post by Spooky23 »

beeftime wrote: post #31

Before I got into software development I worked for a South Korean company that helped high-level students get into American and Canadian universities. The single biggest source of stress for myself and the other westerners working there is that the administration's (and the parents'!) only goal was to get these kids into a school, and absolutely no thought was given to acclimating them to a different culture or teac…

It's more than that -- parents explicitly don't want their children to absorb American culture.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#106

Post by BlackjackCF »

habosa wrote: post #74

It seems obvious that a huge (and hard to solve) reason for this is simply language! There are many levels of language proficiency: Level 1: Can read and write it at your own pace Level 2: Can comfortably converse in a professional setting (little slang or cultural knowledge needed) Level 3: Can comfortably converse in a social setting (slang, faster speech, less clarification) Level 4: Can do all of the above passiv…

It's a bit of a catch-22 because you need a high level of interaction with native speakers to be able to get to Level 4/5, but it's intimidating and difficult to do so.

Most of the international students I've interacted that pushed through this were really, really social to begin with.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#107

Post by uremog »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #63
TorKlingberg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This completely invalidates the headline! Go study in Japan or anywhere, and you will see that foreign students mostly hang out with each other. Certainly their close friends will be fellow foreign students. This is mostly because local students already have an established friend group. Besides, many are on short exchange programmes. How close friends can you really become during a 1-2 year exchange? How many of thos…

"Go study in Japan or anywhere, and you will see that foreign students mostly hang out with each other." That is not a right comparison. The U.S is not Japan.

And yet the conclusion is still right.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#108

Post by carussell »

tcbawo wrote: post #103
Bartweiss wrote: post #16

People should know the Quartz headline is wrong. Follow the source link and you find that 40% have no close American friends, which is different from "friends on campus". I checked the source looking for a baseline (how many domestic students have no close friends) and discovered that it was specifically about international students making friends with Americans. > "Nearly 40 percent of the survey respondents had no…

In general, I've found that people will not invest as much in a friendship given an upfront, known shelf life (duration of grad school, year abroad, etc.) unless they are bound by a similar constraint. How often does chatting with someone on a plane lead to a life-long friendship?

This is true for a lot more than friendships. It's less rational than I think you try to give it credit for in your last sentence.

How long were you at your last job? Let's say you spent 3 years and 2 months there. Let's make an assumption and say that your time there was a positive one for your colleagues, and that you left with no animosity and—specifically—no animosity about the timing or circumstances of your departure.

Now let's suppose, though, that you walked in on your first day knowing that you would end up spending 3 years and 2 months there, down to the date of your departure, and during introductions you let your colleagues (including management) know about the limit on your time there. Let's call this version of you You'.

The way this would play out is that You' could make the exact same moves as you in every situation, and yet will be given much fewer opportunities and find much smaller success, despite there being no difference between you and You', save for this small discrepancy. As a result, your colleagues and the company will end up getting much less value from You' than they get from you.

People are bad at maximizing the resources available to them.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#109

Post by slantyyz »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #99
cushychicken wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his comparison is perfectly valid. It's not one of East Asian vs US culture; it's one of coming from one culture to living in a very different one. He's discussing the same situation mentioned in the article, but in reverse.

The reverse ( non East Asian moving to an East Asian country) is not the same. East Asian countries were never a nation of immigrants.

America is a nation of immigrants, but isn't the USA supposed to be a "melting pot"?

Contrast that to Canada, where the term we used was "mosaic" (when I was growing up in the 70s & 80s).

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#110

Post by aakriti1215 »

I personally chose to come to University in the US and had a great experience. While my campus had issues with international students and domestic students being divided, we did a lot of research for our newspaper and wrote opinion pieces on how to bridge the gap.

If you'd like to read about another perspective to how international students feel after coming to the US, here's an opinion piece I wrote: http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/agrawal-us-universitie...

If you'd like to read more about what it's like to be an international student making friends with domestic students: http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/agrawal-making-friends...

Here's an article one of my colleagues wrote about making friends with international students as a domestic student: http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/simon-making-friends-w...

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