Cross-Cultural Adjustment and Social Skills

Abstract

‘Social skill'is a psychological term which indicates techniques for the formation, maintenance and development of interpersonal relationships. Surveys and experiments have been conducted to investigate the contents and functions of social skills, and educational training methods have been developed for their acquisition. Sojourners who are unfamiliar with interpersonal behaviors in a new culture, such as greetings, assertions, hesitations and courtesy, are thought to have difficulty and misunderstanding. In social skills learning, useful modes of cognition and behavior for cross-cultural interpersonal relationships are extracted, and attempts are made to understand and acquire the social behaviors. First, in this article, based on studies of international students in Japan, the relation between social skills and cross-cultural adjustment is discussed. Second, the conceptual framework for using this psycho-education method in cross-cultural education and an outline of the learning session are introduced. Third, the future task of the study is described. Thus this study examines how social skills affect cross-cultural adjustment in terms of the relation with host people and the attitude to host culture, and seeks the point of contact with Japanese Language Education.