We Used to be Smarter: An Empathic Exhibition about Asian ESL International Students’ Cross-Cultural Learning Adjustment Challenges | Siheng Wang

Watch this video to get some awkward feelings!

Overview

For years, Asian ESL International students taking college or higher-level courses in developed English-speaking countries is a global trend. According to Open doors 2020, most international students in the US were from Asian countries such as China, India, and South Korea. Similar figures were reported in other western countries. Those students are taking a course in an environment quite different from their mother cultural context, which is defined as cross-cultural learning in this exhibit.

Studying outside one’s home country can be really exciting while having many adjustment challenges at the same time. So a lot of international students, like me, are thrilled and struggling. Language barriers, learning styles, cultural differences, financial issues, discrimination, physical and mental health problems are common challenges in cross-cultural study life. Even more serious, international students were even reported to commit suicide every year because of the stress and anxiety caused by those challenges.

To help ESL Asian international students have better cross-cultural learning experiences, my research focuses on identifying their typical difficulties and provide some solution proposals through literature review and a co-design section. I have found that studies on international students started about a century ago and several themes were mentioned many times: English proficiency, the instructor’s role, instructors and students’ perceptions, the instructor’s support, peer support, mental health, and faculty support. This exhibit could not cover all the themes so far because my research is still ongoing. However, I have applied diverse empathic approaches to represent some of these themes to give visitors a general experience of encountering ESL Asian international students’ challenges.

Overall, this exhibit is like an empathy phase introducing ESL Asian international students’ adaptation obstacles to visitors. A subsequent step would be creating a guideline brochure for both instructors and students. The guideline would be based on my further study and experiments. You are more than welcome to leave your valuable comments here through any way we provide that you feel comfortable with: the jam board,  my personal email, or the collective comment area.

About Siheng Wang