Causes of Stress on International Students Education Research Paper

Causes of Stress on International Students
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Introduction
In the 21st century, more opportunities for studying abroad have been created being an advantage to the youths who desire to study in foreign countries. The idea of going to a foreign country fills the students with a lot of excitement and high expectations of how life would be away from home. Many people, especially in the developing countries, believe that studying abroad creates higher opportunities of having a great future. For a good number of foreign students, the experience of studying abroad has been a positive one. However, it is quite common to have experienced stress and loneliness while pursuing studies abroad. Higher learning institutions in many foreign countries have a duty to make sure that the students have a comfortable stay as they live abroad because it will help them achieve their goals in academics.
What Causes Stress in International Students?
International students are particularly susceptible to developing mental disorders such as anxiety, mood and stress-related disorders (Pedersen, Lonner, Draguns, Trimble, & Scharrón-del, 2015). The first cause of loneliness among international students is loneliness. Loneliness is a universal psychological and emotional experience. Loneliness is a feeling that is likely to occur to many people especially when they are living many miles away from home (Ra & Trusty, 2017). Although the feeling is said to be normal it gets out of hand when one is not able to enjoy their day to day lives. Loneliness makes the student to submerge themselves into dependency relations, imitations and strive for power and status (Wu, Garza, & Guzman, 2015). Studies show that adolescent students suffer from loneliness unlike other age groups. Most students, cultural loneliness is what disturbs them the very first months of being in the foreign land. Culture shock can hit an international student any time while studying abroad (International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, & Kurosu, 2018). This can be a very isolating and disorientating experience for many students so it is very important for these students to give themselves time to adapt. Mostly the cultural loneliness is triggered by the lack of a perfect culture (Chopra et al., 2013).To the international students, a perfect culture is one which they can relate to easily without much struggle.
The second cause of stress for the international students is the language barrier. The language barrier is something that results in a feeling of exclusion and loneliness. One’s ability to communicate effectively plays an important role in determining how well one will be performing socially and in the academics (Lopez-Leyva, 2016). For that reason, language fluency leads to a successful integration and reduces the trauma in the student while they are in a new land. Many international students take time before they can learn a new language and that hinders the transfer of knowledge. The foreign students studying abroad go through a lot of stress as they learn the new language with the aim of achieving much in their academics which is what took them to the foreign country. They struggle to get a balance of the situation...