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

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

#221

Post by daurnimator »

vacri wrote: post #136
edblarney wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's by far more than just language. Cultural norms, customs, and the fact that on many campuses, there are quite a number of foreigners, making it more difficult for the social scene to absorb. US/UK and Australia are all basically the 'same culture' as far as people outside the Anglosphere is concerned.

> US/UK and Australia are all basically the 'same culture' While indeed similar, a story on that: a friend at a high-end consulting firm here in Australia told of a US colleague who was over for a 6-month secondment. At the end of the visit, he apparently said "I wish I had known at the start that the people making fun of me probably liked me, and the people being perfectly polite probably didn't..."

As an Australian living in the US it was probably odder: I'd make fun of people that I thought were friends... which probably drove them away; while I'd be polite to people I didn't like.

My spouse always said she had a problem that people thought she was being genuine when she was being sarcastic, and sarcastic when she was being genuine: she even got told off at work about it.

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

#223

Post by vlunkr »

rootsudo wrote: post #212
31reasons wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to this. As a Non western student I never had any American friends in Collage. After more than a decade living in the US I still don't have any. Primarily because I am introverted but culturally I care less about American sports and music (two big cultural domains). Edit: Another important factor (at least during collage) is the financial one. As a student from a poor country I had far less financial resource…

you do know that many Americans don't focus heavily on American sports and music? As someone who was born in the USA and raised, I have zero interest in sports. Music, I have a fleeting interest due to it's global acceptance. Financially, not all Americans are rich or come from 2 income households. Alot of 18yr olds+ celebrate independence by moving out, taking a crappy local job at a fast food or retail and still, m…

"Introvertness isn't an issue, did you actually try?"

I don't think you understand introvertedness.

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

#226

Post by jogjayr »

kop316 wrote: post #208
jogjayr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> international students are cliquey. It might help if you understand why they're cliquey. Many of them are living away from home for the first time, so hanging out with familiar faces and having shared cultural references is comforting (though it sounds wrong). They may not be as proficient in English as they are in their native tongues, so they speak their own languages when they're with each other. And of course t…

Out of curiousity, did you meet or make many American friends? To me, I enjoy meeting different people from different cultures. I imagine I am not the only one.

Not many. I too enjoy meeting people from different cultures but...it's difficult, for me at least. I mean I find it hard to make friends period, regardless of culture.

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

#227

Post by ap46 »

yalogin wrote: post #142

If there are 750K foreign students coming in every year to the US why are there only 65K H1 visas per year available? Surely they should expect at least 10% of them to want to work in the US after their education right? With that why is everyone acting as if the Indian outsourcing companies are the problem for the H1 visa shortage?

Its because 65K is for workers without degrees from US colleges & another 25K is for people with degrees from US to get the OPT. The 65K gets 85% applicants from IT companies based out of India, those jobs don't pay well but companies willing to pay decent salaries get thrown out of it coz of sheer probabilities. There was a post some time back recommending a application fee based on the number of applications from a single entity.

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

#228

Post by lazaroclapp »

Most foreign students are in the US for a two years masters program, which is not that long a time to assimilate to any culture. I am from a relatively similar western culture, I arrived here thinking to myself in English 50% of the time (not my native language, but my main "Internet language"). I still spent my whole first year with my closest group of friends consisting chiefly of Germans, Greeks (from actual Greece, not a frat house), Indians and Chinese. It wasn't that it was easier to breach that cultural gap, but more that other international students were aware that there was a gap to be breached. Americans seemed always more likely to only understand overtures of friendship in their very specific cultural context, and even with extensive American media exposure it takes a few comical mishaps to become fully conversant in that cultural code, independent of language. English fluency was the lesser of the issues for me, but admittedly having a strong accent can make it even harder to be understood at a loud party even if it is perfectly fine for asking questions in class. I don't blame the natives at all for it, but do keep in mind that it is the foreign students who often do 9 parts in 10 of the effort. Wonder what is the statistic - even for colleges that are 50/50 overall - of "American student with no foreign student close friends".

For the curious: I did end up having a much closer group of friends including roughly 50% American students later, though, after bonding over one of the most American experiences possible, a Spring break trip.

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

#229

Post by mikekchar »

crazygringo wrote: post #218
oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm American, lived in Brazil for 8 years, became totally fluent in Portuguese, worked at a local company, etc. After about 5 years, I realized that no matter how much vocabulary I learned, how perfect my grammar was, or how reduced my accent was -- I would never get the references to childhood cartoons, or any of another 1,000 things that came from growing up there. And it's actually crazy how much of casual convers…

This is the reason I rent old videos of "Anpan man" (a Japanese cartoon for 2-4 year olds), etc. I learn karaoke from the 80's and 90's (and even enka!). But even still, after nearly a decade in Japan, most of my social connections are actually my wife's friends and family.

It is quite interesting, though. My biggest goal in learning Japanese was to make a friend who could not speak English. That's what led me down my path. I think without that focus, it would have been quite difficult. Also a bit strange that my first real Japanese friend was actually the person who became my wife. For the first 3 years, we spoke only Japanese, but now her English is so good that we hardly ever speak Japanese :-P

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

#230

Post by humannature »

mikekchar wrote: post #229
crazygringo wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American, lived in Brazil for 8 years, became totally fluent in Portuguese, worked at a local company, etc. After about 5 years, I realized that no matter how much vocabulary I learned, how perfect my grammar was, or how reduced my accent was -- I would never get the references to childhood cartoons, or any of another 1,000 things that came from growing up there. And it's actually crazy how much of casual convers…

This is the reason I rent old videos of "Anpan man" (a Japanese cartoon for 2-4 year olds), etc. I learn karaoke from the 80's and 90's (and even enka!). But even still, after nearly a decade in Japan, most of my social connections are actually my wife's friends and family. It is quite interesting, though. My biggest goal in learning Japanese was to make a friend who could not speak English. That's what led me down m…

You sir have yellow fever (asian fetish), along with 90% of the white guys in Asia. You probably won't admit it though. But seriously, if you didn't like Japanese women would you really be studying Japanese back when you started?
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