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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

#251

Post by afashglaksnhb »

arambhashura wrote: post #125
hkmurakami wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sort of okay with the cheating on English proficiency exams. They're pretty contrived anyways. But these groups also tend to help each other out in cheating on actual assignments and tests, which doesn't sit well with the me.

Going off-topic from the OP: Not only that, but when I was a foreign student, the Indian and Chinese students had networks of past-year students, who'd built up databases of exam questions. While perhaps strictly not cheating, this gave them an advantage, because some professors repeated questions from previous quarters/years. Some of us thought that was unfair, and talked with the professors and they were unwilling…

Everywhere I've studied made past exam questions available by default - and doing them as part of revision was absolutely standard. Certainly not cheating!

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

#252

Post by Baeocystin »

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…

I can relate to what you're saying. I'm American, born to English-speaking parents. But my father worked for the US State Department, and I spent almost the entirety of my childhood overseas. We moved from country to country (mostly SE Asia), and each location had its own unique challenges and delights.

But. The most difficult move for me, by far, was the one that took us back home to the states. Suddenly, and for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people that all spoke a language I could understand. But I understood nothing of what they were saying! Every joke, every reference... I had no idea what anyone was talking about, and it was awful.

It took me many years to get to the point where I was able to at least recognise the references, even if I didn't experience the things referenced. I still feel like a foreigner most places I go.

I don't say this with any sadness or regret. I feel I gained more than I lost. I loved my childhood, and the lessons I learned. But some were more painful than others, and the lessons in the difference between linguistic and cultural fluency were some of the sharpest.

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

#253

Post by kentrado »

thowfaraway wrote: post #180
anigbrowl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.' - H. L. Mencken American society is massively socially segregated by race and class, more so than in many other countries. I can form friendships with people with zero language in common, but it took me several years in the US to build a community of American friends despite being a native English speaker and a highly literate one at tha…

I've been using HN daily for about 8 years. There are about 5 usernames I recognize because I'm wowed by their knowledgable responses. Then there are about 5 usernames I recognize because I go wow, that guy is always an argumentative abrasive jerk. Yours is one of the 5 in the second category. Your need to include the Mencken quote is a small example of what pushes you down into that category. Perhaps the reason you…

I find your comment distasteful and frivolous. Ad hominen attacks do not contribute anything to the discussion. Please refrain from that.

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

#254

Post by Baeocystin »

mikekchar wrote: post #233
wallace_f wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's just not dominated because it is always considered an old people thing, not what young people do Yes, well that's true, but now it's part of youth culture so I think we're actually in agreement on that. However, what I'm not sure about is South East Asia..? I believe in places such as the Phillipines, drinking culture was largely introduced by the West, but I'm not sure about that.

I think it really depends on what period of history you are talking about and also what you mean by "West". The Philippines is, of course, currently dominated by the Roman Catholic religion, but in pre-hispanic days there were local animist religions. I don't actually know that much about Philippine history, but every other culture in the area had a rich tradition of alcoholic drinks. These days there are a lot of co…

I used to live in Laos, and I agree with your assessment. Rice wines and whiskeys were omnipresent, even in the local Buddhist monasteries.

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

#255

Post by afashglaksnhb »

67726e wrote: post #9
nkrisc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there are people here who have experienced this themselves? Also, the fact that it's being upvoted is evidence it's of interest to the community.

To play Devil's Advocate, there is no downvote option so it's hard to gauge just how much folks care about a given article.

Once your karma goes over about 1000 you get a downvote on articles (not certain about the threshold).

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

#256

Post by detaro »

afashglaksnhb wrote: post #255
67726e wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play Devil's Advocate, there is no downvote option so it's hard to gauge just how much folks care about a given article.

Once your karma goes over about 1000 you get a downvote on articles (not certain about the threshold).

No, you don't. Articles can't be downvoted, only comments.

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

#257

Post by ajaimk »

A very one sided argument and a good example of using statistics for evil.

I came to the US in 2007 for my Undergrad from Dubai (Indian by Birth). I lived on a dorm floor with 40 people and only another Indian and I didn't actually talk to that guy much. Most of my friends are Americans including some of my closest - To be honest, the few Indian friends I have are people from work.

End of the day it comes down to your comfort zone. People who come to another country to get an "American degree" will stick to their comfort zone. For those of us who come to explore and understand the local culture, we're going to assimilate into the local culture (my kickball team calls me a coconut: Brown on the outside and white on the inside).

Do you want to stay a tourist or become a local?

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

#258

Post by Sacho »

carussell wrote: post #108
tcbawo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dep…

I think there's an omission in your argument. The reasonableness of not forming a friendship given limited time constraints is based on time being a limited resource, e.g. it'd be better to spend time on other friendships. In your argument, you didn't analyze whether the time saved by not befriending You' was "better" spent reinforcing other friendships or whatever else. The company may have received less value from You', but the rest of the team may have increased their own value by forming stronger friendships. It's not necessary that this will be the case, but it's a non-trivial assumption to make that befriending "you" is the best allocation of resources. It all depends on the shape of the friendship-strengthening-to-company-value function.

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

#259

Post by badminton1 »

Consider yourself in the following scenario:

You hang out with Indians and they start talking about Cricket, a sport that is widely watched there, but also a sport that most likely you know nothing about. How can you partake in that conversation? you can, probably, but only at a basic level and you might not have a lot to add.

So, the same happens with American football, or baseball, or sports that are not widely followed elsewhere.

Those types of conversations marginalize foreigners, even if it's non intentional. Now, if you have empathy, you might prefer to talk about something else, with the purpose of being inclusive.

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

#260

Post by gedrap »

morgante wrote: post #156
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…

I'm not convinced that language is actually such an essential aspect. Cultural similarity seems like a much bigger one. For example, I've seen Indians with great English struggle a lot more to fit in and acclimate than French students with poor English but more shared cultural touchstones. As an American, I've found it to be much easier to make friends with Europeans than with students from non-Western cultures—even…

It actually is but obviously varies from person to person and from one environment to other.

I am from Eastern Europe and did my degree in England. In the first year, I lived in university halls and out of 8 people in the flat (including me), 6 people were English. It was really really hard initially because I could understand only about half of what they were saying because of the accents, so it was hard to participate and much easier to just browse internet in my room.

However, I picked up the language really quickly since I was very often surrounded by native speakers so all was good at the end, just the initial couple of months were really tough.

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