Chapter four analyzes the result of the interview from three aspects: the general situation, the analysis of the reasons why they choose to come to China and HZNU to study, and the analysis of the two scales – socio-cultural adaptation and psychological adaptation。

Chapter five contains the findings based on the interview content, the suggestions for future South Korean students, and the limitation of the study。

Chapter Two Literature Review

2。1 Important Terms

There are some important terms about cross-cultural adaptation that need to be explained, including culture, cross-cultural adaptation and sojourner。 

2。1。1 Culture

The term culture was originated from Latin, meaning cultivate。 It is said that the term “culture” is the most complex word in the English language。 Through the times, there are many different definitions and interpretations about culture。 In the book Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, A。 L。 Kroeber and D。 Kluckhohn (1952) collect 166 definitions about culture, piding them into six groups, each defining culture in different perspectives, including descriptive, historical, normative, psychological, structural and genetic definitions。

Generally speaking, it is believed by most scholars that culture does not consist of any single component but is a whole containing many different aspects。 Edward Burnett Taylor defined culture as a “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Taylor 1871)。 However, as a complex whole, culture also has other features。 One of the most distinctive features is that culture “distinguishes the members of one group from another” (Hofstede 2001)。 That is the reason why different places have different cultures and these cultures all have their own characteristics。 Besides, culture can also be “transmitted from generation to generation” (Murphy 1986) and this is another important feature of culture as well。

Though it is difficult to clearly draw the line between what is culture and what is not, it can be sure that culture is a highly generalization of every aspect of life, possessing its own features of a particular region。 In this study, the word “culture”, from the author’s perspective, refers to the collection of different emotions, attitudes, values, faiths, thoughts, etc。, mainly experienced during the period of the subjects’ stay。文献综述

2。1。2 Cross-cultural Adaptation

The research of cross-cultural adaptation stemmed from the study of “acculturation”。 The word “acculturation” was first put forward by J。W。 Power from the United States Bureau of National Affairs in 1883。 He defined it as a psychological change of people from non-native culture resulting from the imitation of behavior in a new culture。 In 1936, American anthropologists Robert Redfidd, Ralph Linton and Melville Herskovits gave their definition of acculturation as “those phenomena which result when groups of inpiduals having different cultures come into continuous first – hand contact with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups” (Redfield, Linton, & Herskovits 1936), and this was the first relatively clear explanation of acculturation。

In terms of cross-cultural adaptation, there are various definitions about it。 Based on Berry and his coworkers (1992), cross-cultural adaptation is related to the adjustments and changes inpiduals or a group of people make according to the new environment they enter into。 Klein claimed that cross-cultural adaptation is “a process of attitude or behavior changes in response to new stimuli” (Klein 1979)。 Kim once defined it as “a dynamic interplay between stress-adaptation and growth” (Kim 1988)。 Later he made clear that it is “the dynamic process by which inpiduals upon relocating to new, unfamiliar or changed cultural environments, establish and maintain relatively stable, reciprocal, and functional relationships with those environments” (Kim 2001)。