Challenges Faced by International Students in the United States Essays

Submitted By harshitaneppalli
Words: 553
Pages: 3

Challenges faced by international students International students are a largest group of students who pursue their higher education in the United States. Generally, these students receive their undergraduate education in their own country prior to their graduate studies in America. These students arrive from a very different academic learning system and cultural context, so coping up with the new academic learning process is the single most difficult challenge they face. But effective coping strategies will help them to overcome the challenge and to be successful in their studies. International students are not accustomed to the interactive teaching style followed in American universities. Here teachers stress students to think and discuss about a certain topic, asking students to participate in class discussion and teachers’ award points to the students for good discussions. International students are not used to this large amount of classroom participation because they are afraid that if they give a wrong answer it might affects their grades as result they become passive listeners. In response to this challenge international students should come up with a strategy of effectively interacting with their fellow students in the class. They need to adapt to the interactive environment by spending more time in learning the topics that are going to be discussed in the class. They have to make a habit of coming up with their own ideas about the topic when they are alone and later discuss about it in the class. They need to be active learners by spending lot of time preparing about the topics before class; asking details about the topics and learning more about the topics. These practices will help them to overcome the challenge of interactive learning process. International students also expect teachers in American universities to explain each and every topic in detail, but in American classroom teachers expect students to read the study material before coming to the class and they might even ask questions from those materials. Here the teacher is only an assistant who helps you to understand the concept by yourself and sometimes explains difficult topics. To overcome this, International students need to follow a process of note taking in