REPORT OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION BETWEEN LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS OF IIUM

1. INTRODUCTION

1.0 Historical Background

As mentioned by Stephen Dahl, in his book, Communication and Culture Transformation, the word 'culture' stems from the Latin "colere", translatable as to build on, to cultivate, to foster and have reflected on the meaning of the word in different versions of its use. In the early stages of the philosophical debate about what is 'culture', the term often refers to the opposite of 'nature', whereas 'culture' was referring to something constructed willingly by men, while 'nature' was given in itself.

However, the definition of culture is still striking. In the words of Stuart Hall, of the Birmingham School, 'culture' is "both the means and values which arise among distinctive social groups and classes, on the basis of their given historical conditions and relationship, through which they 'handle' and respond to the conditions of existence". The individual and the culture in which are lives is a complex set of relationships. On the one side, the individual determines its culture, on the other; it is determined by its culture. By contributing to the culture around him, the individual is part of the cultural change.

Intercultural communication is the process of exchanging meaningful and unambiguous information across cultural boundaries, in a way that preserves mutual respect and minimizes aggression. For these purposes, culture is a shared system of symbols, beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations, and norms of behavior. It refers to coherent groups of people whether resident wholly or partly within state territories, or existing without residence in any particular territory. People from different cultures encode and decode messages differently, increasing the chances of misunderstanding, so the safety-first consequence of recognizing cultural differences should be to assume that everyone’s thoughts and actions are not just like ours (Hart, W. B. 1997).

In addition, misunderstanding and miscommunication occur between people from different cultures because of different coding rules and cultural norms, which play a major role in shaping patterns of interaction. When someone cannot adopt the other people’s cultures, he or she may suffer culture shock. Culture shock is a feeling of stress and anxiety a person experiences when encountering a culture different from his/her own.

Intercultural communication may occur because of several reasons. First, ethnocentrism which means a belief that your cultural traditions and assumptions are superior to those of others. For example, the Jews consider themselves more superior than others. Next is stereotype and prejudice to other people. Stereotype is to put or place a person or a group of persons into inflexible, all encompassing category. While, prejudice refers to a judgment or opinion of someone formed before you know all the facts or background of that person. To illustrate, most of male employers regard women as cannot be a professional engineer. Lastly, assuming similarity toward other people as they are sharing the same values or attitudes with us also being a barrier to have an effective communication between people whose different cultures.

Communication is primary way that cultures are expressed and sustained. Therefore, this study is conducted to analyze the intercultural communication between local and international students of International Islamic University of Malaysia.

1.1 Problem Statement
This study aims to investigate the intercultural communication among local and international students in International Islamic University of Malaysia in semester 2 (2007/2008). We want to know major causes that lead to intercultural communication between both categories of student and how they settle their problem. Lastly, we like to examine the closeness and togetherness of the relationship between local and international students of IIUM.

1 .2 Objectives of the Study

The study is design to achieve the following specific objectives.
1. To study the type of miscommunication among international and local students in IIUM.
2. To study the level of miscommunication among international and local students in IIUM.
3. To identify the types of activity joined by international and national students.
4. To discover the method of problem solving or conflict management among international and local students in IIUM.
.
1.3 Significance of the Study

It is a well known fact that the IIUM is the university that composed of students from various countries and cultural background. Notwithstanding of that, some students tend to be in conflict with those who adopt other cultures to their own. Conflicts of intercultural communication often caused of misunderstanding about other cultures. Therefore this study is conducted in order to seek what are the main causes contribute to the conflicts and to find out the best solution for such conflict. In this vein, the study is intended to generate knowledge about the level of, and likely factors that impede interaction between international and local students at IIUM.
The University Authorities, armed with this knowledge, could design and implement institutional programs and activities to establish and reinforce the bond of intercultural communication most particularly between local and international students of IIUM. In addition, this study is very significant in order to improve effective communication between both local and international students of IIUM.

1.4 Limitation of the Study

The study will be limited in its scope, i.e., only students on the main IIUM Gombak campus will be considered. However, we face external challenges particularly during the time of our surveys. First challenge is the respondents do not answer the questions given to them. They choose the questions they want to answer and the rest of the questions remain unanswered. This situation makes us difficult to arrive at the high level of reliability of our study. Furthermore, the study also limited due to the credibility of the answer given by the respondents. This suggests that the respondents do not really answer the questions sincerely. Finally, another challenge that we face during the study is lack of flexibility. It means, we do not available during the respondents answer the questionnaires. Some of the questionnaires were given to the selected respondents and they were given option either answer the questionnaires immediately or take it to hostel. Those who bring the questionnaire back to hostel answer it during their free time in their hostel. Then, we collected the questionnaires and some of them do not answer some given questions due to confusion and they cannot ask for clearance from us.

1.5 Research Question

Instruction: please tick or fill in the blank where appropriate.

Part One: Demographic Back ground

1. Male: ( ) female: ( )
2. Malaysian: ( ) International: ( )
3. Year of Study: ( )
4. Kuliyyah:
5. Native language:

Part Two: Intercultural Communication between IIUM Students

6. Do you have friend from other countries?
Yes ( ) No ( ) If your answer NO, move to question 14.

7. Have you ever face any miscommunication with them?
Yes ( ) No ( )

8. What type of miscommunication? (You may tick more than one option)
Verbal ( ) Non-Verbal ( ) Cultural Misinterpretation ( )
Others:

9. Have you ever misinterpreted of you friends’ non-verbal communication?
Yes ( ) No ( )

10. What type of non-verbal miscommunication?
Smiling ( ) Greeting ( )
Shaking Hand ( ) Staring ( )
Others:

11. Are the matters of miscommunication related to your own culture?
Yes ( ) No ( )

12. What is your perception of the level of communication with friend from other
countries?
Very Satisfactory ( )
Neither Satisfactory nor Dissatisfactory ( )
Very Dissatisfactory ( )

13. Do you get together to share any recreational activities like in-door games etc. with
International students?
Yes ( ) No ( )

14. If you face miscommunication problems between you and your international friend,
How would you settle it?
………………………………………………………………………………………..

15. How effective is your solution to solving with problem?
………………………………………………………………………………………..


2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Coming to a new place before manage to have a brief knowledge about that particular place is totally a mistake. As an area of inquiry, intercultural communication has been studied extensively in fields such as cultural anthropology, sociolinguistics, sociology of language, and communication science (Gudykunst, 1986; Harman & Briggs, 1991; Kim, 1986).
Regarding to this situation, a few research had been accomplished in order to know the complexities and problems that the people faced when they interact in new place. Intercultural communication scholars have examined diverse variables that influence communication effectiveness.

According to Zaharah S.A Keeney, it is predictable that individuals have some sort of expectations of how others should or should not behave in any situation. Such expectations are rely on the social norms of each particular culture. Even individuals from the same culture may assign different meanings to behaviors.
The different culture has different language. Thus, this will create as a problem in communication. There was a study which addressed the problems that faced by people of different country when they interact. Most student both foreign and Malaysian, noted that they find troubled to approach or cooperate with people who are speaking a language that they do not understand (Zaharah S.A Keeney). Additionally, this part also will state that, the different language will create the misunderstanding of the certain words. This might be because of different in slang, and dialects.

Nonverbal communication is very important to understanding and communicates with another people. Nonverbal cues are often understated, and many individuals do not realize how much of their perceptions of others are based on these cues. Even something as simple as “smile” can denote many different meaning, it depending on the person’s cultural background and other factor (Zaharah S.A Keeney).

It has been mentioned in another studied that, there are a number of behavioral concepts has been identified that can be used to distinguish between cultures.
These include the differences in the usage of kinesics (body movements), proxemics (space organization), oculesics (eye movement), haptics (touching behavior) as well as paralinguistic concepts, such as accents, intonation, and speed of talking. Not surprisingly each of these concepts plays an important role in intercultural communication.
(Tajfel, H., 1978)

The nonverbal cues are ambiguous and this will lead to the misinterpretations, conflicts and misunderstanding of the meanings or behaviors of individuals. For example, Hofstede, G. (1980) believed, eye contact is an important part of the communication process in Western cultures. It is often seen as a confirmatory action of what is said. However, maintaining eye contact is not usually suitable in certain Asian cultures. Thus it creates hardship in intercultural communication.

Lastly, communication between strangers is characterized by a limited amount of information about each other, by ignorance of the means to reach a goal, and by ignorance of the probable outcomes. To deal with the ambiguity that describes these new situations, we need information to managing uncertainty and we need to reduce tension to managing anxiety (T.Wood, Julia, 1999).

This because of, whenever people experienced the complexities in communication, it makes their lives difficult and hard. So they have to solve those problems in order to adapt to the new culture. This is important in order to improve the living quality of the individual. For example, in the previous research, it had stated that the respondents adapt to the new culture through making friends with people from other culture, or gaining more information about a particular culture (Gudykunst and Kim, 2003).

The fact of stumbling block that builds a gap among them can be crash through a few approaches. These will help them to adapt towards the new environment as well as new the culture. Thus in our research, we will find the causes of cultural disintegration between local and foreign students and a way to solve those problems.

3. RESERCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Locality of study

The citizen of International of Islamic University Malaysia, Gombak
Campus.

3.2 Participant

The participants in this research, we had selected them from different countries, courses and level. In order to avoid gender bias we fairly select 15 females and 15 males. Since we are required to select the respondents from different nationalities and cultural setting, fortunately some of our respondents coming from suburban area and capital area. This condition brought us different views answered from the same question.

3.3 Research type

In doing the research, we had chosen the respondents randomly. Furthermore, the research type was using a set survey questions that contain fifteen questions.

3.4 Procedures and data analysis

Before we proceed with the research, we had constructed questionnaires based on the objectives that we intend to achieve. The questionnaires were formed after the consultation with the instructor.Then, the researcher gave a set a questionnaire regarding the subject matter to the respondents and the respondents were given a brief explanation about the purpose of the study. Besides, the participant given the option to take it home but with the guarantee of return it back or answer it immediately. Since they are randomly selected, in avoiding bias, we have divide upon 15 questionnaires will be answer by the local students and the other answer by the international students. Later, all the results will be gathered and analyzed by using SPSS.

4.0 RESEARCH FINDINGS

Since the topic the objective of the study is intercultural communication between local and international students of International Islamic University Malaysia, the result will be analyzed in tailoring the line of answering the objectives of this study.


The result of the findings shows that local students have the 13% higher compared to international students. As host national, who brought up within a custom and norms that are strongly behold, the local students faced more miscommunication. As mentioned by Zaharah S.A Keeney, most student both foreign and Malaysian noted that they find troubled to approach or cooperate with people who are speaking a language that they do not understand. Therefore, from this statement, we can conclude that from the result of our research, language may become the barrier of communication. In a while, the type of miscommunication occurs will be explaining on the later paragraph.

The second figure of the graph explained the type of miscommunication actually occurs by both nationalities of IIUM students. However there are differences of type of miscommunication by them. As we can observed from the graph, Cultural Misinterpretation becomes the barriers for the international students where the score is 60%. On the other side, Verbal communication is the biggest problem for the local students, where it scores is 64%. According to Zaharah S.A Keeney, diverse variables influence communication effectiveness. Therefore, from this statement, we can generalize that this two factors are the main subject upon the problem that occurs among the IIUM students.

Figure 3 shows the level of communication by nationality. However, the question lacking of justifying why would they feel that so. Therefore, they should be a continuation of this matter. Since there are large differences of both nationalities, we have made decision in what reason they feel so. We have put upon priority for the international students due to the reason of they are living abroad, but they very satisfied with their level of communication. This situation occurs on the basis of their effort of solving the matter.

In measuring the togetherness among them, there are slight differences upon yes and no answer from the question of get together sharing indoor activities. The score for yes is 53.3% while for no is 46.7%.

Form the score of 53.7% for yes; we decide it to see the level of involvement by nationality. The international involvements (56%) are higher than local students (44%). This shows among the excellent participants that achieve success at the university level, we get to see there are usually international students. This situation may reflect the Figure 1, where about 60% of local participants are facing miscommunication problems. Therefore, they refuse to involve with indoor activities for afraid of the barrier may become larger.


As for examine the effectiveness of their way of solution the score for very effective is higher which is 56.7% compared to depends to the other party or with whom they faced the problems (16.7%) and neutral, which is neither dissatisfactory nor satisfactory (26.7%).

In measuring the level of effectiveness, however as what can be seen from Figure 5, the score from the international students are higher compared to local students upon very effective. This may due to the reason that, the international students have put so much effort in adapting new culture and flexibility upon understanding others. Therefore, when the problem matters found it solutions, they felt very satisfied with their own solution. This may become the factor upon the result.

5.0 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

From the research conducted, we can see that each student is facing miscommunication. We are more than our culture. Even though we lived within it, but our attitude and behavior may differs upon what are stated by the norms and custom. When living abroad, we have the urge to cope with the new environment and that particular new culture in assurance our survival. Thus, one’s understanding of another culture will strengthen interpersonal relationship among the local and international students of International Islamic University Malaysia.

6.0 CONCLUSION

International Islamic University of Malaysia has promoted international and integration circumstances within the campus, yet it still tough to achieve as some students cannot tolerate to other cultures and get into miscommunication among local and international students. This study then conducted in order to find out what are the types of miscommunication and to identify the way they solve their problem of miscommunication. Besides, we want to identify the relationship between both students from local and international by looking their involvement in shared activities like indoor games. These objectives of the study then led us to suggest some recommendations to the respected authority of IIUM.

First and foremost, we think that the University should make compulsory for every student clubs and society within IIUM to reserve a position for international students. For instance, vice president 3 in each clubs should be given to international student whereby their job scope focuses on international students by persuading them to join every activities organized by the clubs. Dramatically, it will establish good intercultural communication and cooperation between local and international students.

Furthermore, the University should encourage every clubs to organize more programmes that participated by both local and international students. Thanks to the IIUM because permitted the Students Representatives Council (SRC) to organize Ummatic Week. This program should be actively supported by everybody especially the authority as it gathers all students from various countries attached with different cultural background. It is where students will have knowledge about other cultures and it will enhance good understanding between both local and international students. As a result, there will be no more intercultural miscommunication be present.

Finally, we hope this study will give benefit to everybody in order to achieve cultural integration, the condition free from intercultural miscommunication.


REFERENCES

Agar, Michael, ‘The Intercultural Frame’, In: ‘International Journal of Intercultural Relation’, 1994

Banks, Stephen P., ‘Intercultural Encounters and Miscommunication’, London: Sage 1991

Beebe, S.A., Beebe, S.J., M.V. (2005). Interpersonal Communication: Relating to others (4th ed). Ally and Bacon: Boston.

Hofstede, G., ‘Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related’. Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1980

Jandt, F. E. ‘Intercultural Communication: An Introduction’. London: Sage, 1998.
Lustig, M W. & Koester, J., ‘Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication across Cultures’. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003

Smith, P. B. and M. H. Bond, ‘Social Psychology across Cultures’, London: Prentice Hall Europe, 1998

Steven A. Beebe, Susan J. Beebe, Mark V. Redmond, ‘Interpersonal Communication’, U.S.A: Pearson, 2001

Zaharah S.A Keeney, Case Study on: ‘Intercultural Communication among Students at International Islamic University Malaysia Including Some Problems and Suggestions’, 1994