CHALLENGES WITH INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION FACED BY INTERNATIONAL CHINESE STUDENTS AND THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Abstract

Foreign countries are very attractive destinations for Chinese students to pursue higher education. The promises of quality education and job prospect made by attending and graduating from these internationally acclaimed educational institutions are highly sought after by many Chinese students. In this regards, these internationally acclaimed educational institutions also welcome international students with the purpose of pursuing higher ranks and meeting global challenges by welcoming more international students. Due to this push in the market for Chinese students and other international students to pursue their studies overseas in these internationally acclaimed educational institutions, it is very important for these students to develop communicative competence in the English language as well as intercultural competence. However, the main issues Chinese international students have suffered in foreign universities are language anxiety, culture shock, initial adaptation, psychological changes, and academic issues. These language and cultural issues are pertinent amongst international students, especially those from China, but there have been many studies that posit that these intercultural communication challenges can be overcome with intercultural communicative competence. Therefore, this article intends to review studies on intercultural communicative competence, especially for Chinese international students. This review article also intends to report studies that were done to examine Chinese international students’ challenges with communication skills and intercultural communicative competence. The findings from the review of these articles might provide insights into the importance of intercultural communicative competence as well as the challenges that Chinese international students face in developing communicative competence that may shed the light for future Chinese international students. This is so that they may be able to prepare themselves not only in developing communication skills, but also intercultural appreciation before studying in foreign countries. This article also hopes to provide program planners and host universities with insightful information about effectively supporting Chinese international students.