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It seems obvious that a huge (and hard to solve) reason for this is simply language! There are many levels of language proficiency: Level 1: Can read and w

• hubert123 10y ago
  Language is not the reason however why these foreign students wouldnt spend energy to learn the language better before studying abroad.
  • oblio 10y ago
    It's one thing to learn the language, it's an entirely different thing to be an pleasant presence, especially in a noisy environment.
  • dandr01d 10y ago
    You should spend the energy to write proper English sentences before posting online. It's easier to learn by doing.
  • lorenzhs 10y ago
    There's only so much you can learn from books and TV shows. One might have Shakespeare's vocabulary and mastered the intricacies of grammar, but there's no substitute for prolonged interaction with native speakers in achieving (near-)native proficiency in a language. Studying abroad is one of, if not the easiest way to get there.
  • toomanybeersies 10y ago
    I've met several people who have moved here to New Zealand specifically to learn better English. It's immensely difficult to learn another language when you have nobody to talk to. Reading and writing proficiency are easy, but the spoken component is just so difficult.
  • TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
    Yeah you can learn English all you want, but that isn't going to help you understand Snoop Dogg lyrics.
    • legostormtroopr 10y ago
      Fo shizzle my nizzle. Snoop wrizzles dope lyrizzles, but his rich vocizzle is confizzling.
  • int_19h 10y ago
    No amount of studying outside of the native environment will give you the skill level necessary to easily maintain social conversations once you're in it. English is not my native language. However, I went to a school that had a specific emphasis on English: we had 5 hours of it per week in the first three grades, gradually ramping up to 6 in middle school and 7 in high school, and adding English literature on top of that. We wrote numerous essays, listened to recordings of native speakers, and spent a lot of time talking and listening to each other. Then I went to study in a college in a country where English is a native language. I could read and write easily - better than natives in many cases, in fact (I'll never forget a rant that our elderly ethics teacher gave to me in private about how, based on the essays she was grading, only people with non-Anglo names could spell "its" vs "it's" right consistently). I could also speak fast while remaining perfectly understandable, and showing only a very subtle, hard-to-identify accent - that's where those hours of listening to tapes and talking with other students to polish pronunciation really paid off. But for the life of me, I couldn't understand half of what people were saying. It was either too fast, or it was in an accent or dialect that was too unfamiliar to parse easily, or it was too casual (shortening or outright dropping many things that are always there in writing); and often, all of these at once. I had to ask people to slow down and repeat things - made all the more confusing because I spoke at a much faster pace (as I was taught to) than what I could follow. It took about two months for everything to really click to the point where I could follow any conversation, and a lot longer than that before it stopped being a conscious mental effort.
• oblio 10y ago
  It's the cultural proficiency that gets you. By now I have probably spent 1000 hours learning (as part of a formal process), reading, listening, writing and speaking English. Probably a lot more, but let's go with that estimate. The actual language learning part was probably 20%, the rest was acquiring cultural references. I'm trying to do the same for French, where I'm probably around level 2 or 3, and damn, I had forgotten how long it takes to "load the cart". In my opinion, native speakers actually "become" "native" in a lesser degree because they were born to parents speaking that language and in a higher degree because they went through school in that language. All the basic lessons at school that everybody learns, all those initial social interactions, day in, day out, in the language they will use for the rest of the life. It's a lot harder to squeeze those in later on, especially since the interlocutors become less and less accommodating.
  • xiaoma 10y ago
    > "It's the cultural proficiency that gets you." Yes. This one of many reasons doing extensive reading of easy texts, children's stories and then later consuming TV and radio is so important. So many learners tend to take the approach of making a giant deck of flash cards or using an app like Duolingo and never get that much authentic input. Going to school is probably the surest way to ensure that you do get all of the above, though it's not the only way. In the future, VR will give learners the quantity of practice and input that the world just doesn't have the patience to.
    • jdietrich 10y ago
      Also, massive amounts of conversation with natives. It turns out that most people are more than happy to talk about their childhood reminiscences with a foreigner, or explain the complicated rivalries between their home town and the next town over. Most people love talking about themselves; as a foreigner, you are in some ways uniquely equipped to be a good listener. Wherever you go in the world, you'll find lonely people who are glad of the company.
  • DINKDINK 10y ago
    > the rest was acquiring cultural references. Exactly as I was reading this sentence I heard someone use the idiom in English, "You're in the home stretch". A bit of a comical coincidence.
• LiweiZ 10y ago
  And the best way to learn, practice and improve for the last two levels is to get involved, which means the ones need more chances are more likely to be separated from the group and this is very discouraging. Instead, babies and toddlers generally get more patient guides. That's a more important reason for adult second language learners. The general solution I can think of is to have a private coach to help them learn with feedback and correction so that learners are more likely to catch the limited chances to begin to get involved with groups. High quality chat bot could be a more affordable option for most learners, if the bot is good enough, which I'm not familiar with. edit: combined two sentences into one.
• edblarney 10y ago
  It's by far more than just language. Cultural norms, customs, and the fact that on many campuses, there are quite a number of foreigners, making it more difficult for the social scene to absorb. US/UK and Australia are all basically the 'same culture' as far as people outside the Anglosphere is concerned.
  • vacri 10y ago
    > US/UK and Australia are all basically the 'same culture' While indeed similar, a story on that: a friend at a high-end consulting firm here in Australia told of a US colleague who was over for a 6-month secondment. At the end of the visit, he apparently said "I wish I had known at the start that the people making fun of me probably liked me, and the people being perfectly polite probably didn't..."
    • morgante 10y ago
      > At the end of the visit, he apparently said "I wish I had known at the start that the people making fun of me probably liked me, and the people being perfectly polite probably didn't..." That's not really a cultural difference. It's just basic social skills in America too.
      • flukus 10y ago
        From what I understand (Australian here) the Australian (and British) version is much more extreme.
        • ska 10y ago
          In my experience the American version really isn't the same thing at all.
      • girvo 10y ago
        Excuse the language, but Australia (Aussie/Kiwi here!) is where you call you friends "cunts" and your enemies "mate". So I can understand someone's confusion!
• hkmurakami 10y ago
  It's not just raw skill but fatigue from the mental exertion of using a foreign language all day. You take classes in a foreign language all day and it's very hard to spend the evening hours also exerting yourself linguistically. I can empathize with the desire to just take it easy using your native tongue after a long day of keeping up with academics in a non native language.
  • gozur88 10y ago
    I think this is the case. When a relative of mine went to Germany as an exchange student she very much intended (as the program advises) to make a lot of non-English-speaking friends. But speaking German was effort for her in a way that speaking English isn't, and after awhile she naturally gravitated toward other English speakers when she was ready to relax.
• dominotw 10y ago
  >My US friends who moved to the UK or Australia had no problem making friends. us, uk and australia are identical cultures. us and india or us and china is not even comparable. Its not just language, its common cultural memes that bond people.
  • guitarbill 10y ago
    that's pretty demeaning. there's certainly overlap, however that's mostly US TV and movies being exported, which also happens in other (non-English speaking) countries. but each has a distinctive culture, with different TV shows, music, artists, celebrities, politicians, words, lifestyles etc. now, speaking english with ease does make it easier to pick up on the differences. but it still takes effort to engage with people. i've seen people from other countries integrate easily because they were either very socially aware or simply made the effort, regardless if they spoke the local language with ease. this happens in countries and with people that aren't the UK, US, or Australia or from there.
    • dominotw 10y ago
      >that's pretty demeaning. sorry , Certainly not my intention. I am curious why you say this though.
      • guitarbill 10y ago
        Calling the US, UK and Australia "identical cultures" is pretty bad, just because they all speak English? True, they share common history, but they also have so many other influences that they're quite different. E.g. Wales, a country in the UK, even has it's own language which is still taught in schools and used officially everywhere.
• TbobbyZ 10y ago
  And this is why most people want immigrants to learn English when they come to the US. Assimilation!
  • habosa 10y ago
    And it's also the reason why throwing an immigrant in English classes won't actually assimilate them. You can't teach Levels 4 and 5 without driven students and a welcoming populace.
    • astrodust 10y ago
      Learning English in school is not the same as absorbing the culture, language, and social conventions in the real-world. I know many people that knew flawless conversational English before immigrating but they were utterly baffled by some cultural conventions and turns of phrase not covered in class.
    • flukus 10y ago
      But you can't get to level 4 and 5 without getting to level 3, and a lot don't get to level 3.
• BlackjackCF 10y ago
  It's a bit of a catch-22 because you need a high level of interaction with native speakers to be able to get to Level 4/5, but it's intimidating and difficult to do so. Most of the international students I've interacted that pushed through this were really, really social to begin with.
  • Crisco 10y ago
    I'm not a social person by nature, but when I decided I wanted to learn Spansh, I had to go out of my way to talk to Spanish with people I didn't know. It was scary, embarrassing, and at times depressing, but my desire to learn the language overcame my fear of social embarrassment. I'm now trying to do the same thing with Portuguese. There are ways to force interaction, but if the student doesn't understand how to learn or doesn't have the desire, then they'll never be able to comfortably speak with people. They don't have to be really social (it certainly helps), they just have to want it enough.
• return0 10y ago
  I don't think that holds, the same happens with Erasmus students in europe (~40% don't make local friends). https://thepienews.com/news/erasmus-students-local-friends-esn-survey/ https://thepienews.com/news/erasmus-students-local-friends-e... And they mostly DO know english and the local language (in fact that's a common reason to do it).
  • sellweek 10y ago
    That may also be a result of how Erasmus programs are structured. At least here in Czech Republic, Erasmus students tend to take classes taught in English, not classes taken by local students, so they interact with many other exchange students but not with locals.
  • verinus 10y ago
    I would think it is even more extreme with Erasmus students. My thoughts about this are: Erasmus students stay for a very limited time- 1 or two semesters and leave then. Forming real friendships take longer. I have only so much time to meet and catch up with friends. Taking away from that time to invest in short term relations is a problem. Erasmus student have other priorities than "natives". First is partying, second is partying and maybe third is university. From my experience regular students do not have the time to go out partying that much resulting in different peer groups.
• stevenkovar 10y ago
  Similarly, I made a good number of friends who were international students by playing intramural soccer. I suppose you could say soccer is a common language.
• anigbrowl 10y ago
  'For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.' - H. L. Mencken American society is massively socially segregated by race and class, more so than in many other countries. I can form friendships with people with zero language in common, but it took me several years in the US to build a community of American friends despite being a native English speaker and a highly literate one at that.
  • thowfaraway 10y ago
    I've been using HN daily for about 8 years. There are about 5 usernames I recognize because I'm wowed by their knowledgable responses. Then there are about 5 usernames I recognize because I go wow, that guy is always an argumentative abrasive jerk. Yours is one of the 5 in the second category. Your need to include the Mencken quote is a small example of what pushes you down into that category. Perhaps the reason you find it difficult to make friends in the real world isn't race, class, segregation, or language, but personality. People who lead with positivity, and the expectation that will be able to make friends probably do a lot better at it.
    • kentrado 10y ago
      I find your comment distasteful and frivolous. Ad hominen attacks do not contribute anything to the discussion. Please refrain from that.
    • anigbrowl 10y ago
      Perhaps the reason you find it difficult to make friends in the real world Not what I was saying at all. Perhaps you should reread my comment, or alternatively ignore it if my opinions upset you.
  • gukov 10y ago
    American society is as good as it gets when it comes to inclusion. No other country, except maybe for Canada, had to deal with multiculturalism as much. Humans are complicated social creatures by nature. There will always be cliques, competitiveness, the us against them mentality, etc. It's who we are. It's what got us here.
• morgante 10y ago
  I'm not convinced that language is actually such an essential aspect. Cultural similarity seems like a much bigger one. For example, I've seen Indians with great English struggle a lot more to fit in and acclimate than French students with poor English but more shared cultural touchstones. As an American, I've found it to be much easier to make friends with Europeans than with students from non-Western cultures—even after controlling for English levels.
  • int_19h 10y ago
    Both are essential aspects. I certainly struggled a lot with the language back in my day, as a Russian studying in New Zealand.
  • 31reasons 10y ago
    I agree to this. As a Non western student I never had any American friends in Collage. After more than a decade living in the US I still don't have any. Primarily because I am introverted but culturally I care less about American sports and music (two big cultural domains). Edit: Another important factor (at least during collage) is the financial one. As a student from a poor country I had far less financial resources to afford a life style that American students enjoy. For example, I couldn't afford to go out or have a Car.
    • tluyben2 10y ago
      Never studied in the US but on; > but culturally I care less about American sports and music Culturally I do not even understand this fascination with sports; we watch football (soccer) when there is some worldcup on and our country is playing but besides that the whole highschool quarterback and rooting for your teams all seems like wasted time to me. That might be cultural. But I always turned that into a strength when making friends. If most people do something like watch sports or listen to music I do not like, I find the people that do not; those will be a niche. But I do not seek them out in obvious places with all likeminded people; when I go to AUS or US (and certainly when I was younger and looking for (girl)friends more) I go to sports bars and or clubs (where they will play music I do not like); in those places there will be 1-2 people like me that were dragged along or went along with their friends and who will be bored. Those end up talking with me and sometimes become good friends (two American ex girlfriends and many good friends, some I still do business with like that).
• flamedoge 10y ago
  I heard this site reddit is great for picking up on dank memes and social cues
• abalone 10y ago
  This notion is simplistic and unsupported by the article. The article mentions nothing about language proficiency and plenty about cultural adjustment, specifically about how peers and teachers interact with one another. There is a lot more cultural overlap with UK and Australia.
• wallace_f 10y ago
  I have spent years living abroad and am utterly unconvinced by this argument. The people who are easiest to befriend are not those with the best language skills, they are those with the same cultural (or sometimes religious) values. At least that has been a very consistent, reliable way of modelling this phenomenon of human behaviour in my travels. A very obvious example is that alcohol is a large part of Western, and now, some Eastern cultures; but people whose religion and culture strictly abhores it will have a harder time being happy among a group of Western friends. Other values around sex and relationships are more subtle but of real importance. Further, pushing the limits of what's PC to say, the fact is many cultures have a "we need to stick together," or "we stick together to preserve our culture" attitude that ends up also drawing boundaries around social circles based on race due to culture. Very close relationships, such as romantic relationships, on the other hand quickly approach the point where language fluency becomes absolutely necessary. But friends to do activities with on the other hand--I love it when people are speaking other languages, have different reactions and place different significance on events. It adds spice to life and opens your eyes to see other ways of viewing things the same way you always had.
  • rootsudo 10y ago
    I have to disagree on: "A very obvious example is that alcohol is a large part of Western, and now, some Eastern cultures; but people whose religion and culture strictly abhores it will have a harder time being happy among a group of Western friends." Alcohol was always big in Eastern cultures. It's just not dominated because it is always considered an old people thing, not what young people do.
    • wallace_f 10y ago
      >It's just not dominated because it is always considered an old people thing, not what young people do Yes, well that's true, but now it's part of youth culture so I think we're actually in agreement on that. However, what I'm not sure about is South East Asia..? I believe in places such as the Phillipines, drinking culture was largely introduced by the West, but I'm not sure about that.
• kagamine 10y ago
  A few comments below disagree with you, but my experience is exactly as you described it, and I am a native English speaker in Norway, where everyone speaks English (although not nearly as well as the media or the locals wold have you think). When it comes to following along at a noisy social event or when there are many conversations happening simultaneously I fall somewhere between 3 and 4 on the list. Cultural references and expressions can easily boot me from a conversation as I lose the thread and have to start thinking about the conversation instead of partaking naturally. There is little in the way of real cultural differences between the UK and Scandinavia but enough to make a person feel like an outsider. This often leads to me abandoning social interactions.
• adim86 10y ago
  Although this could be a factor, I have to disagree on this. Before any foreign student is given admission to an American University you need to take TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). You need this to be a high score to get admitted and depending on the country, you need to show this score at the American Embassy to get a student Visa. Unless it is some exchange program ALL foreign university students can speak English on a conversational level. I am from Nigeria, where English is the National language. I grew up visiting America as a child because my parents grew up there for some portion of their lives. So even with all my linguistic advantages I still bonded more with other International students faster and better than I did with Americans (regardless of race). I would say the issue I found was cultural, basic things like sense of humor differs. What a Nigerian finds funny is not always the same thing an American would find funny and vice versa.If you cannot laugh together, you have a problem. Same with etiquette, some things a Nigerian may do might be seen as rude to an American but a sign of love in Nigeria. The second issue I found is that Americans don't have a lot of curiosity beyond their own culture. A lot of Americans have the idea America is the best country in the world, so what could they learn from anyone else when they push the world forward, so there is a lack of interest to understand others perspectives and there is a gap. I personally worked hard to have American friends and I have life long ones today both white,black, latino and Asian American friends but this did not come easy. This took about 10 years of open-mindedness and extroversion that was not always reciprocated.
• Arizhel 10y ago
  >But it can fall apart in a social setting. Once there are 5 overlapping streams of conversation stuffed full of cultural references these coworkers of mine very frequently lose track of the conversation and become quieter and quieter over time. Hmm, this sounds exactly like me. And I'm a white American guy (obviously, English is my first and pretty much only language, unless you count the German I learned in high school where I don't even meet your level 1). I'd say I'm at your level 4 with English. When there's too many people talking, I'm unable to discriminate. It's not quite as bad as it sounds, if the relative volumes are different enough I can (so in a bar if someone is talking into my ear and the other conversations are in the background, I can make it out though I'll ask for a lot of repeats), but my big problem is in the workplace, where people for some reason insist on carrying out multiple loud conversations in the same room, right next to each other, and seem to have no concept (unlike the bar-goers) that it's really really hard to follow one conversation when the other one is right next to you at the same volume. Yet another reason I totally regret going into engineering and software, and wish I had gone into something else where I'd get an office.
• flour_power 10y ago
  Native english speaker and I can't do 5 half the time.