CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Background
With the improvem ent of China’ s comprehensive national power and people’ s increasing disposable income, it is not surprise to find th at a great number of pa rents send their children abroad to pursue further study. However, it is the fast growing number of high school students going abroad to study that catches our attention.
As indicated by Natio nal Bureau of Statistics China, the urban re sidents’ per capita disposable income have been increasing fast re cent years, which m eans people can afford to go abroad.
A research conducted by Center for China and Globalization（CCG）and Mycos reveals that the proportion of high school students a nd college going abroad for study is going up dramatically. The research conducted in 2015 s hows that the proportion of students going abroad to study after high school dropped from 61% to 44% com pared to 2012. While the proportion of students going abroad to study in high school increased from 17% to 27% the same year, which means most of those students will not participate in the college e ntrance examination or finish high school courses in China.
If we look back at the history , we will no tice that there were three tim es that huge number of Chinese students went abroad for study. The first tim e was after 1894 when First Sino-Japanese War happened, m ost people went to Japan for study , and some went to the United States or Europe; The second tim e happened after May 4th Movem ent, when most people went to United S tates, France and Russia, with others going to Britain, Germ any and Japan. The third time was in 2070s when the reform and open policy was put forward, and the number of people going abroad this tim e was far larger. Even until no w, the number is still increasing rapidly.
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1.2 Research
Topic As a result of China' s growing participation and impor tance in the process of internationalization and globalization, a continuously rising num ber of young Chinese students has gone abroad for further study. Up to now, the number of Chinese students abroad made up the lar gest group of international students in the USA. Because of its size and th e growing recognition of China and Chinese culture around the world, research on a wide range of problem areas among Chinese students abroad has been initiated, esp ecially in the USA. This research aim s to investigate the di fficulties young Chinese students have been encountering in the process of adjusting to American culture. V arious interviews and questionnaire are used in this study to collect information from 30 young Chinese students in the United States.
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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Studies on Cross-cultural Adaptation Abroad
In the end of 19th centuries, cultural adaptation was fi rst brought forward and was used in anthropology, then other disciplin e gradually began to take intere st in it, especially history . The extensive application in social science began in 1930s.
Studies on cross-cultural adaptation have been increasing since the beginning of 20th century. Cross cultural adaptation, the core term going through all over the thesis, is used in broad sense to denote “the entirety of the phenomenon of individuals who, upon relocating to an unfamiliar sociocultural environment, strive to establish and maintain a stable, reciprocal, and functional relationship with the environm ent”(Kim, 2005, P .380). Cross-cultural adaptation means how a sojou rner deal with cultural changes. Begley claims that adaptation encompasses culture sh ock, assimilation, adjustment, acculturation, inte
