Abstract:

The growing number of international students around the world makes it relevant to study the problem of acculturation to a new culture and to develop adequate methodological tools for assessing acculturation.

The number of international students studying in Russia is constantly growing, despite the problems associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. Numerous studies show that a low level of Russian language proficiency can cause problems of intercultural adaptation (acculturation) of international students to study in Russia. However, there is a lack of research on attitudes towards the study of the Russian language as a factor of acculturation to Russia among international students.

The purpose of the present study is to identify the correlations between the level of acculturation to Russia and attitudes towards the study of the Russian language among international students.

A total of 50 international students (52% - female) of RUDN University took part in the research. These students represent different countries, namely: Azerbaijan, Vietnam, China, Korea, Mongolia, Serbia, Tajikistan, and some others. They have been living in Russia from 2 to 10 years and learning Russian from 2 to 7 years.

The Acculturation Scale to Russia (ASR) by A. Ardila et al. was used to diagnose acculturation to Russia among international students. This Scale includes 20 items that need to be rated on a five-point Likert scale from 1 to 5. To measure the attitude to the learning Russian, the author's questionnaire of 6 statements was used, agreement with which must be assessed on a 5-point Likert scale. The descriptive statistics methods and Spearman’s rank correlation analysis were used for processing the data. Statistical processing was carried out in the R software environment for statistical computing and graphics, version 3.6.1., psych package version 1.9.6.

The findings of the research show that the acculturation indicator by the ASR has positive correlations with 3 indicators of attitudes towards learning Russian: "interest in learning Russian", "positive attitude to speaking in Russian", "positive attitude to writing in Russian", as well as with the total indicator of attitude to the learning Russian. Thus, international students who enjoy learning Russian, speaking and writing Russian, as a rule, tend to adapt better to Russian culture.

The results obtained allow us to conclude that the attitude towards learning Russian can be a predictor of the acculturation to Russia level among international students.

Keywords:

International Students, Acculturation to Russia, Russian language, Acculturation Scale to Russia (ASR).