Conclusions

By investigating participants’ constructions of emotions as they interacted with people in the host environment, I have presented their essential

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environment, and valuing approval in interactions with people in the host environment.

Participants’ adjustment concerns regarding host communication signify that, in addition to its widely-discussed cultural learning function, host

communication also played an emotional support role (e.g., reducing academic adjustment stress and environmental insecurity in the host context), thus highlighting the significance of the emotional benefits of host communication, which is under-explored in previous studies (e.g., Bochner et al., 1977; Kim, 2005; Spencer-Oatey and Xiong, 2006).

The findings also suggest that participants’ desire for host connections had an instrumental focus (in terms of improving spoken English, gaining access to more information about the host academic and social environment, and strengthening an understanding of the environment) and that they also displayed a strong willingness to maintain close contact with other Chinese students. Rather than assimilating themselves to the demands of the host environment, participants seemed to prefer a more integrationist connection style, as Ward et al. (2001, p. 112) write, ‘they have strong preferences for retaining their cultural identities while sustaining good relationships with members of the dominant culture’. The findings therefore highlight the

restrictiveness of an assimilationist view towards intercultural adjustment which seems prevalent in the existing literature, as it cannot fully interpret

participants’ integrationist adjustment preferences. Such adjustment

preferences, however, were less easily implemented in reality due to a variety of cultural (e.g. perceived cultural distances), personal (e.g. habituation with existing social network, the need to preserve emotional well-being),

interpersonal (e.g. perceived indifference from host people towards

communicating cultural knowledge) and contextual (e.g. perceived low level of host receptivity, conformity pressure from the Chinese group) restrictions as outlined above, which led to participants’ inadequate sense of connection with the host society.

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Moreover, participants’ understanding of emotions also shed light on the complex effects of the large proportion of Chinese students on their affective intercultural adjustment experiences. On the one hand, participants felt restricted and even disturbed (e.g., by some ingroup members’ gossip) by the Chinese group which limited their opportunities and freedom to participate fully in host communication; on the other hand, they also enjoyed staying within the Chinese group due to its unique benefits of boosting emotional well-being in their adjustment journey(in terms of minimising loneliness, adjustment stress, and creating a ‘home’ feeling in the UK). Hence, instead of viewing the large number of Chinese students merely as a disadvantage to their intercultural experiences as proposed in Spencer-Oatey and Xiong (2006)’s study, participants appeared to drift with the push and pull of emotional events brought about by engaging with their Chinese network. Furthermore, the findings suggest that participants’ close contact with other Chinese students and lack of host connection was their own choice after balancing their competing emotional needs regarding connecting with various people in the host environment, thus highlights the significance of emotions in guiding participants’ adjustment orientations.

In addition, the findings highlights the important role academic staff play in showing acceptance and empathy towards their students in the face of the difficulties the academic environment imposes upon them, and calls for the joint efforts from all parties in the university to create an emotionally supportive academic environment to facilitate participants’ academic adjustment.

Chapter summary

The aim of this chapter is to explore how Chinese students construct their understanding of emotions in their interactions with the host environment in order to inform their intercultural adjustment concerns in their general

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engagements with the host people and cultures and the relevant conditional factors that influenced this construction process. The findings show that

participants were eager to connect with people and the environments in the UK, and valued being approved of in both social and academic interactional

contexts.

Participants pursued host connections that provided valuable instrumental and emotional support in their adjustment to the host environment, as well as opportunities to experience and learn from the host cultures. A mutually curious and open attitude was perceived as an important conditional factor for developing satisfactory host connections based on communicating cultural knowledge. Participants attributed their limited host connections to a perceived cultural distance, an attitude of not building intercultural connections on

purpose, perceived low host receptivity, and the restrictive effects of their Chinese network. Their study aims and limited length of stay in the UK reinforced their tendency to avoid developing host connections on purpose. Despite feeling restricted by the Chinese group, participants valued preserving a cultural-emotional connectedness with their Chinese peers.

Participants sought approval in terms of treating others equally and accepting various beliefs and ways of life to ensure the establishment of inclusive,

understanding, and respectful intercultural relations. Moreover, academic staff’s approval, underpinned by accepting and empathetic attitudes, was deemed crucial for participants’ learning confidence and satisfaction, as well as a desirable learning and academic adjustment outcome.

These findings emphasize on the importance of the emotional benefits of host communication in terms of reducing participants’ academic adjustment pressure and host environment insecurity, a point largely neglected by previous studies. They also demonstrate participants’ integrationist preference to

connect with the host environment, which reveals the inadequacy of the assimilationist approach prevalent in extant intercultural adjustment literature in understanding participants’ adjustment orientation. Moreover, the data

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sheds lights on the restrictive effects of a variety of cultural, personal, interpersonal and contextual factors have on the participants’ integrative efforts to connect with the host environment and therefore emphasise the importance of paying attention to these conditional factors in order to yield a more holistic understanding of sojourners’ intercultural adjustment experience. In addition, the findings reveal a complex picture of the roles Chinese groups played in participants’ adjustment processes, in which the Chinese group acted as both an obstacle that hampered participants’ full participation in the host society and as a facilitator that promoted their emotional well-being in their international sojourns. Finally, the significance of co-constructing a more emotionally supportive university environment between university staff and international students is raised.

In the next chapter, I will investigate participants’ constructions of emotions as they performed communicative tasks and developed interpersonal

intercultural relationships in the host environment in order to reveal their main adjustment concerns in these two intercultural contexts.

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Chapter 5 Constructions of emotions in task performance