Lessons in Australian Culture Shock

This article tells about culture shock issue mostly faced by international students especially if it is their first time study overseas. This article was published on Canberra Times, 2nd March 2008.

I T'S JUST over three years since the badly decomposed body of a 24-year-old Chinese student enrolled at the University of Canberra, Zhang Hong Jie, was found in a Belconnen unit. It was seven months since she had been strangled. It was a tragic story, still playing out in the Chinese legal system, which spoke of isolation and loneliness. It is tempting to draw conclusions from the story about the general experience of international students, who make up a significant proportion of Canberra's university students, but the truth is more mixed and generally much rosier. As one might expect, many international students are homesick when they arrive in Canberra. Most undergraduate students are only 17 or 18 years old and leaving home for the very first time and leaving it thousands of kilometres behind. ''Once they get over the initial euphoria of being here, they get homesick,'' the University of Canberra's international student advisor, Bari Hall, says.

''The next biggest problem would be some of the culture shock. We send them all kinds of information before they arrive, about Australian life, Canberra life, various things like speech differences, food differences all those things [but] they still experience culture shock.'' Culture shock is by no means universal, however. A third-year bachelor of commerce student Junde ''JD'' Li, of Singapore, found it easy to fit in. ''Australians are so laid back that I don't think it's much of a culture shock, and I don't think most students experience it,'' Li, who is also the Australian National University Students' Association's international student officer, says. Hall says that while culture shock was common, some students ''settle in here and lap it up''. About 10 per cent of the UC's 10,000 students are international students, coming from 80 different countries. A quarter of the international students are from China, followed by Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Pakistan.

At ANU, international students make up almost 22 per cent of the university's student population, coming mainly from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Some student support at the UC has been lost. The university's Students' Association has been without an international student officer for more than a year, a casualty of the Howard government's abolition of compulsory student unionism. Sri Lankan student Samitha Ramanayake is in her third year of the ANU's bachelor of biotechnology course. He is a volunteer in the university's meet-and-greet program, picking international students up from the airport on arrival and helping them settle at the university. He found a marked difference between the initial reactions of Asian students, whom he says looked ''really gloomy'', and European and US students, who were ''really happy to be here''. Unlike Australian students, international students or their parents, usually pay full fees, so they are under considerable pressure to do well. An ANU bachelor of commerce, a popular choice for international students, costs about $65,000. Li says, ''They pay three times the cost of locals. And then there's flight tickets, accommodation, health cover.''

Many work the full 20 hours a week that their visas allow. Canberra's seemingly intractable accommodation crisis does nothing to help students feel settled. The ANU itself has a severe shortage of accommodation. On- campus accommodation is coveted, for convenience and because of the support it offers to first-year students. However, because final room allocations are not decided until just before classes start, some students arrive without knowing where they will be living, and many are forced to live off campus. Some even spend their first few days or weeks in a hotel or hostel. Ramanayake says, ''Most people choose the YHA because it's the cheapest. This time, I don't know why, so many people are not housed on campus. So many arrive without a place to stay.'' English is an obvious challenge for students from non-English speaking countries. Although Canberra's universities require a high standard of English, problems still arise. Li says some students' language limitations mean they have trouble understanding lectures and taking part in tutorials. Ramanayake says some students shock him with their poor command of spoken English.

''For Asian students, it's pretty good, [but some] European students have a problem, like French students this semester. Some people couldn't communicate I had to use pen and paper.'' A lack of confidence in English was one of the reasons why international students sought help from the ANU's student association. Rizvi says, ''Finding accommodation without much English is very tough.'' She encourages international students to bring in their rental agreements, while a full- time lawyer working at the association takes up claims. Although the ANU says international students perform no worse than other students academically, Rizvi says they are disproportionately represented among those who seek the Student Association's help in appealing poor grades. ''I think it's the English thing. People like JD help with the wording of the appeals and we also go along to hearings. A lot of time we're providing moral support.'' For all the difficulties faced by foreign students, Rizvi is full of praise for the ANU's support. ''I think the international education office is very supportive. It's a really big effort, 24 hours a day.'' The office is a drop-in centre and referral service for international students. It provides the meet-and- greet service, a mentoring program, training sessions, and academic help, among a host of
other services.

The office flew Li and Rizvi to Singapore and Malaysia for a three-day pre- departure briefing, allowing fledgling students to learn about Australia and make friends. Each of Canberra's campuses have a number of social and cultural organisations catering to students from particular countries. The Chinese Students and Scholars Association in Canberra, for example, has almost 600 students from the ANU and 63 students from the UC as members. The association organises everything from movie nights to paintball. Some students enjoy their experience in Canberra so much they fear reverse culture shock on returning home. Indonesian PhD student Gita Gayatri, who has spent four years at the ANU, spoke to the Sunday Canberra Times just before flying home. As a Muslim, she was warned to expect hostility in Australia, and while she experienced some verbal abuse off-campus she says she is sad about going home. ''It was a very precious experience for me. [The best thing] was the friendship and the opportunity of learning things from different cultures. In Indonesia I have to go back to a normal life with lots of compromise. I don't know whether I can cope.''

Make Friends during Study in Australia

Studying in overseas means we will have a chance to meet and know many people from different countries. We can make friends with lots of people. It is interesting since people from different countries have different cultures, norms, values and beliefs which shape their behaviors and attitudes. Therefore, while we make friends, at the same time, we can learn new cultures which can broaden our perspectives in seeing the world.

I have a very nice experience in meeting new people while I am studying at the ANU. Some of the new people I met become my close friends, although some of them are already graduated. Most of them are people who I met in the classes. During the semester period, as international students who still find difficulty in understanding the materials of lectures, most of our time is spent to study together. We discuss the topics of the lectures and ask each other if one of us does not understand about the topics. I find this study group can help me much to understand the subjects, especially in the first semester.

During holiday, we always try to find a time which we can do some activities together. Usually, as we are interested in learning each other culture, we try to find activities that can also give us a chance to learn other cultures. We tend to choose cooking together and visiting each other. We cook food from our own country and eat together. I knew that even some of us come from Asian countries, but our foods are different. Unlike me, most of my friends can not handle spicy foods that contain a lot of chilly! When we are hanging out together, we try to learn more about each other by sharing stories of our family, friends back home, occupation, hobbies and lots more. All of the activities done are one of the most precious moments that I have during my study in Australia.

Making friends is always fun!

Foreign students facing tougher tests

This article below is about a possibility of the changes English language requirements that must be met to enter Australia university since it is found that the international students' English skill still below expectation. This articel can be found in this address : http://www.theage.com.au/news/NATIONAL/Foreign-students-facing-tougher-tests/2007/01/29/1169919238933.html#


Australia will toughen up English-language requirements for foreign graduates after a report showed poor language skills among many overseas students.

The report by Melbourne's Monash University found more than a third of overseas students were completing degrees with English so poor they should not have been admitted in the first place.

Report author Professor Bob Birrell, director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research, said the government required those coming directly to Australia to pass an English test.

But a third were entering universities without having passed that test.

"The government is assuming that the various pathway programs they do once they get there will bring their English up to standard. But these results indicate that is not the case," he said.

Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC) president Professor Gerard Sutton said a toughened language requirement, jointly developed with the immigration department, will come into effect in July next year.

Professor Sutton rejected any suggestions universities had lowered standards to allow fee-paying overseas students - who contribute around 15 per cent of university revenues - to graduate.

He said only a student with adequate English reading, writing and listening skills could pass university exams.

But students with inadequate spoken English ran into trouble if they sought to remain in Australia and work in their chosen professions.

There are currently 239,000 foreign students in Australia. About a third will seek to stay and work - a process the government encourages to meet skills shortages.

"What has been identified, and one has to accept that this is an issue, is that in some of the professional areas the spoken English is not up to scratch," Professor Sutton said.

"The way this is dealt with is if you wish to remain in Australia and work in the professions, there are more difficult criteria that the vice-chancellors have worked up with the department of immigration."

Professor Sutton said there had been a 12-month trial of the new regime.

(IELTS) in Australia, said the onus should fall on universities to ensure students had adequate English ability to study and meet employer requirements.

"Language competency and communications skills should be embedded in the curriculum and should be tested and examined in exactly the same way as the content of the professional and general disciplines," he told ABC radio.

Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the government's systematic underfunding of universities and promotion of the user-pays philosophy had led to the use of overseas students as cash cows to prop up university budgets with little concern for quality.

"The government and the opposition need to commit to a significant indexed boost in government funding to universities and in turn allow universities to change their overseas student profile to favour quality not quantity," she said in a statement.

Prime Minister John Howard said he would seek advice from the vice-chancellors and Education Minister Julie Bishop.

"But I'd like to look below the headline of that research before saying other than that, on the face of it, it's concerning," he said.

However Ms Bishop accused Mr Birrell of an "extraordinary" attack on universities and said international students must meet international benchmarks in language to get a university place.

"I have seen no evidence to suggest that students aren't able to complete their courses because they're failing in English, yet they are being passed by the university - I have not seen any evidence to back that up," she said.

Dealing with Assignments

I knew one thing that most international students will be concern when they are studying in Australia, it is about the assignments. Based on my experience study in Australia, especially at ANU for almost two years, assignments are the most crucial things during the semester. At the first time, I found difficulty in doing the assignments because the assignments are quite different with what I have been done in my previous studies. The requirements of the assignments and the expectations of the lecturers are quite difficult to be fulfilled if we do not have any experience with Western education. However, we can still achieve good marks if we want to give more efforts in understanding how to do a good assignment, whether it is a presentation, essay papers or project reports.

One thing that important in which I discovered as I am experiencing in doing the assignment, especially in essay papers and report projects is we need to clearly stated our arguments or opinions. But, our arguments or opinions must be supported by credible authors or experts from journal articles. This is quite hard for international students that come from Asian education since the education shapes us to be descriptive in stating our opinion when we have to write an essay. We are afraid to state our arguments or opinion because we are not an expert, we are still a student. We are also afraid to make mistake. Changing a descriptive model of writing into an analytical model is very hard because we already experienced the descriptive model for a quite long time. This situation, generally, impedes students to obtain good mark, especially in the high distinction level. However, we can overcome this problem.

Based on my experience, as we have to write more essays, we will attain more sense of what we have to do in creating a good essay. One of my lecturer said that to have a good writing skill, one needs to practice a lot and there is no other way except that. Since we write more, we can figure out the good structure of an essay, the essay or report writing style, or the good presentation. To give more assistance in understanding of doing the good assignments, we can also ask to the education learning centre in the university. Although the consultants may not have the same study background with us, but at some stage they can give suggestions since they know the Australian education and its expectations. In addition, do not afraid to ask the lecturers about the assignment if we do not understand. The lecturers will basically be willing to have a discussion about the assignments with their students.

Assignment is not as a threaten as it looks like! In fact, we may miss it as we graduate!

PhD Scholarships 'Below Poverty Line'

Here is another article which is important especially for those who want to study for PhD degree. It was written by David Curry published in Canberra Times on 1 May 2008. The article can be accessed in this address : http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/phd-scholarships-below-poverty-line/402962.aspx

Hope you still have a spirit to pursue a PhD degree!

The dollar value of PhD scholarships is "in freefall" and projected to drop below the poverty line later this year, the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations says.

Figures released by the council yesterday show that the weekly stipend rate for Australian Postgraduate Awards projected for the December quarter of this year $385 will fall below the projected Henderson poverty line for the same period. And that figure is for a single person with no dependents. The stipend, which does not vary according to circumstances, is well below the poverty line of $581 for a person with two dependents.

The standard annual stipend for a PhD student is $20,007.

The council said the dollar value of the PhD scholarship had fallen, in real terms, from 47 per cent of average earnings in 1992 to just 35 per cent in 2007. "These figures spell out what research postgraduates already know that the basic stipend rate for the APA is, by itself, simply not enough to live on," council president Nigel Palmer said.

At the same time, studies showed that between one-fifth and one-third of academic staff at universities were expected to retire in the next decade, and would need to be replaced by PhD graduates.

The council said the Federal Government needed to follow up its commitment to make research postgraduates a priority, by immediately increasing the stipend rate for all postgraduate awards by 30 per cent. It also called for the exemption of scholarships and awards from assessable income for taxation and income support purposes.

Marcia Keegan, 29, an economics PhD student at the University of Canberra, has two part-time jobs to top up her scholarship. The 29-year-old does research work at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the university and teaches aerobic classes.

Ms Keegan's scholarship is an industry scholarship, which is higher than the standard rate. Having taken out a mortgage before she began the doctorate, she said she would not have been able to make ends meet had she been on the standard scholarship and had her husband not been working full time.

"The base scholarship is about $400 a week, and even in a group house these days it would be hard to get a room for less than $150 a week."

Ms Keegan echoed concerns aired by the council that tutoring, which many PhD students turn to for extra money, resulted in many hours of effectively low-paid work. Students were paid well for the tutorials, she said, but were expected to do several hours of preparation, along with marking and student consultation. Eight one-hour tutorials a week would mean a total of 16 hours of work or more.

ANU PhD student Nicki Munro, 35, who is studying restoration ecology, said she managed reasonably well on a scholarship, but only because she has no dependents, lives in a group house with three others, rarely eats out and usually rides her bicycle.

"It's relatively easy to live in on as a single student, provided you accept that you're going to live as a relatively poor student for the next four years," she said. "I think it would be a lot harder if you were a mature age student with dependents it's very common for people to go back and do PhDs when they're older."

The acting vice-chancellor of the ANU, Professor Lawrence Cram, said the formula for indexing the stipend was inadequate to keep up with the cost of living. "I think questions could be asked as to whether the indexation used is actually appropriate for the salaries of people."

Professor Cram said if the Government was serious about a knowledge economy it needed to increase the number of PhD students, which is low per capita compared with many countries. Most doctoral students regarded the PhD as a job rather than a course of study, and deciding to embark on one was a difficult decision when there was often much more money to be made in the workforce.

Professor Stuart Cunningham, president of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, said scholarships also needed to be extended from three years to four, since most PhDs took more than four years. He said the financial hardship of undertaking a PhD was daunting for anybody.

Part Time Job

During their study in Australia, students also work as a part timer. Probably, finding a part time job is not hard for local students. But for international students, especially if it is their first time to study in Australia, looking for a part time job may be quite difficult and time consuming. Based on my experience, it depends on the area students want to work. Most of the part time jobs available are waitress/es, kitchenhand, cashier, cleaner, and housekeeper. In this article, I will not explain how to find a part time job. Indeed, I will highlight some issue that international students must consider when they are looking for part time job so that they can study and work without problem.

In the new regulation, international students will have a working visa attached in their passport directly. They do not have to apply for a working visa when they arrive in Australia. One thing that must be remembered by international students is the working visa only allows students to work twenty hours a week during the semester. But, they can work more that during the holiday. What usually happens is as international students attempt to get money to cover their living cost, they break the rules. Their assumption is that since there are plenty of international students in Australia, the chance to get caught are little. However, we can not rely on this assumption since it is wrong. We must obey the rules especially, we are not in our home country.

Another thing to be considered is find a part time job which is safe. What I mean by safe is student must ensure that the company or business owner also obey the regulation of running business in Australia. I found that some students who are working in the restaurants receive cash on hand. This cash on hand implies that the owner does not report his/her employees’ tax to the taxation office. Thus, it can be said that the employees work as illegal employees. To avoid any problem that can come up because of working in such company, it is suggested to find a credible company to work for even if it is only a part time job.

Good luck in searching the part time job! But do not forget, study comes first!

Students in Distress

Here is an article about one of international student problems when they feel isolated during their study in Australia. I found the article in the Factiva website. The article was published in The Newcastle Herald on 8 March 2008 which is written by Matthew Kelly.

Isolation 'leads to drugs'

SOME international students are turning to alcohol and drugs as a result of social isolation and disillusionment with their study experience.

Others, who are paying between $20,000 and $50,000 a year to study in Australia, are quitting within the first year because of difficulties fitting in.

Several international students at the University of Newcastle raised their concerns about their experiences with The Herald this week.

Second-year Kenyan student Brian Iseme, 23, said he found it difficult to settle into his studies when he arrived.

"I expected more [help] when I came here," Mr Iseme said.

Moroccan student Jawad Chafil, 24, said many international students were under the impression that Newcastle was a global city.

"They should be doing a lot more in the area of extra-curricular activities for international students, things like recreation activities and shopping," said Mr Chafil, who admitted he used to smoke marijuana to deal with the the isolation.

"That's what I thought before I arrived but it's very different."

Other students had turned to stronger drugs with disastrous consequences, he said.

A university spokeswoman said overall feedback from its 3500 international students indicated most were positive about their experience at the university.

"However, at times, they have raised concerns about their reception from the broader Newcastle community," she said.

Newcastle University Students Association president Beth Maloney said the university needed to invest more resources to help international students.

"If international students are contented and performing well it's only going to benefit the university," Ms Maloney said.

The university spokeswoman said it was continually improving and expanding the services available to international students.

The university regularly promoted counselling and other services.

"Importantly, the university recognises that, in some cultures, asking for help is a sign of failure and stress, particularly international students," she said.

"An important message for all students is that asking for help at this university is not a sign of failure."