The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1 - 83

Influence of Language Skills

felt they could not muster the courage to approach domestic students. Examination of
participants' lived experiences indicated most
participants lacked conﬁdence in approaching
domestic students. Some participants credited feelings of hesitation to the inability to
join casual conversations in their residential
communities.
Mora provided an example of her difﬁculty in
communicating with American students on
her ﬂoor:
The jokes-I can't understand and sometimes
when they are talking too fast, I cannot
understand what they are talking about.
When they ask me something, I don't know
how to experience my feelings or how to
transfer my feelings. I feel really awkward and
embarrassed.
Tom also had difﬁculty befriending American students and sustaining relationships,
despite the fact that his residence hall had a
large number of international students. He
credited this to not being fully able to join in
conversations with American students. Tom
stated:
They talk about their own lives and I have
no idea what they are talking about. Or I
don't know how to make a sentence to make
comments to them. I feel bad to interrupt
them to make a new conversation. So I just
follow them.
Tom noted American students seldom initiated additional conversation. This confused
Tom, who said, "I don't know why. And they
never call me even though I gave them my
phone number."
Riverkid also found it difﬁcult to approach
American students due to her lack of conﬁdence in her English speaking skills. Having

browsed Internet forums prior to her arrival in
the United States, she expected difﬁculty with
making American friends. The forums included several Chinese international students who
said the language barrier was a big problem for
international students in the United States. Although Riverkid knew it would be difﬁcult, she
was unprepared for how hard it actually was to
make friends in her residence hall, stating:
I tried to ﬁnd students to be my friend, but
sadly, I didn't ﬁnd them. I think the biggest
barrier is the language. Because I ﬁnd for
international students, Chinese is really
different from English. It's hard to manage
English.
Due to the language barrier, most participants found friends within the Chinese international student community. Rachel was very
involved in several organizations on campus
and viewed herself as successful in making
American friends. However, she also joined
some of the Chinese student organizations
because she realized, "sometimes you need
Chinese friends because they can understand
you better and can communicate better."
Derek had to change rooms because he was
admitted to a pre-med LLC for the spring semester. As an LLC member, he was required to
live in a speciﬁc residence hall with members
of his academic program. Derek moved from a
ﬂoor with a large international student population to an LLC where he was the only Chinese
international student. Derek spoke about how
the language barrier impacted his loneliness:
I feel really lonely. In my classes, I'm doing
it all alone. The experience is at ﬁrst, I had
a biology lab. And all of my classmates have
American partners. It's not the course that
is hard, it's the language that's hard. I have

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1

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