Abstract:

Economic and cultural globalization, shifts in geopolitical landscape gave a tremendous impetus to students seeking foreign educational opportunities. In this regard, Russia is viewed as one of the most significant educational destinations due to relatively low tuition costs, a broad range of majors, diversity of programs and courses. According to OECD – Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – Russia enjoys one of the largest increases in the number of international students across all OECD and partner countries. Consequently, international students’ adaptation to new learning environment is among priorities for Russian tertiary educators nowadays.

The article is based on the 3-year research, identifying and investigating the experience of international (namely, Arab) students in different cultural and academic environment.

The focus is put on two primary types of adaptations; the academic one (AA), i.e. a set of educational strategies designed to satisfy individual learning needs to enable international students to meet the learning outcomes and gain mastery in an entirely new learning space; and socio-cultural adaptation (SCA), which is regarded as a form of students’ interaction with new environment, an ability to fit in with the social life patterns in the new culture.

The research has been conducted within the groups of international Master Students from Iraq via the research methods of observation, survey, and interviews. The collected data analysis revealed the most substantial challenges the Arab students face, among them are the following: a certain cultural shock resulted in cultural adaptation difficulties, difference in teaching approaches, oral communicative nature of Arab students which leads to particular problems with reading and writing skills, etc.

The analysis made helps to identify and classify major adaptation challenges, suggest tools how to facilitate the process of proper adaptation and provide effective learning for international students.

Keywords:

Academic adaptation, socio-cultural adaptation, students’ difficulties.