Traveling a thousand miles: Determinants of cross-cultural adaptation of Asian students in Australia

This paper reports the results of a questionnaire survey conducted with 261 Asian international students across different disciplines at a university in Australia studying for their bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees. This research investigated the differences in L2 proficiency, integrative motivation, linguistic confidence in L2, as well as the determinants of cross-cultural adaptation between Chinese and other international student groups. The results show that linguistic confidence in L2 is the strongest predictor of sociocultural adaptation for all Asian international students and academic adaptation for Mainland international students. Moreover, integrative motivation and L2 proficiency as significant predictors of sociocultural/academic adaptation are found in the sample of Mainland students. As the predominant group, Mainland students display lower levels of L2 proficiency, linguistic confidence in L2, as well as sociocultural/academic adaptation relative to other international students. Implications to host institutions, host faculties, international students, and future research are also considered in the paper. Copyright © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.