The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1 - 135

Understanding Communication Dynamics

tive of critical exchange factors like cultural
contexts.

ing, caused some difﬁculties. For example,
Justin recounted the following experience:

Communication challenges. Despite the

My roommate is very neat, and, for the ﬁrst
time, I felt a cultural difference. For example,
when I washed the dishes I always use my
hands to lather dishes, but my roommate
didn't accept this and grabbed my hand
and put it into very hot water to make the
bacteria go away, and I was burned. I didn't
understand, but after that incident he said he
was worried about bacteria and wanted me to
use a sponge . . . [the other roommates and
I] discussed this and asked him not to be too
strict; we agreed to use a sponge and he is
getting better.

conﬁdence that they had in their intercultural
communication abilities, several respondents
noted some communication challenges experienced in the LLC. While a majority of them
disagreed with the notion of having difﬁculty
communicating with others, 54% of those reporting difﬁculty were international students.
When the survey provided space to expound or
clarify, several of the responses identiﬁed language difﬁculties as the speciﬁc issue.
Since much research on the successful acculturation of international students focuses
on high English language proﬁciency skills
(Andrade, 2006; Sherry, Thomas, & Chui,
2009; Yeh & Inose, 2003), it was not surprising to see language barriers involving accents,
proﬁciency, enunciation, and comprehension
as a common theme.

Lack of cultural understanding and awareness. Another common theme that emerged
from the survey results was a lack of cultural
awareness and understanding. Several respondents found it difﬁcult to communicate
due to the cultural differences between the
roommates. Diana noted this about American
culture:
The way Americans connect with people, they
like to ask questions that I don't think every
other culture responds to exactly the same
way, so it may be a challenge getting people
to open up and it may take more patience
than Americans are used to.
Several respondents in both the surveys and
interviews noted that cultural differences in
little things, such as different methods of clean-

Sometimes experiences like Justin's lead to
a disconnect in the communication process
because the conﬂicting parties might stop
talking to each other. Proactive discussions
like roommate agreement meetings and intentional cross-cultural training and education
for students and staff can lead to more positive outcomes and fewer scenarios like this.
The detailed responses of the interviewees'
recounting of the communication challenges
during their experience with the community
revealed that their intercultural maturity had
developed.

Intercultural Maturity Development
In the follow-up interviews, researchers noted
that several stages of intercultural maturity
were evident in the student reﬂections. The
following examples illustrate where students
touched on various dimensions of the intercultural maturity development model.

Cognitive dimension. Some of the interview participants had difﬁcult roommate conﬂicts that led to some positive, though mostly

135

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1