Stages of Culture Shock

Outline the stages of culture shock with reference to the literature and your own experience and make suggestions for how you could have dealt with culture shock better. With reference to the literature; also discuss the major differences between your home and host culture.

The phenomenon of culture shock is accompanied by almost everyone who goes outside of the home country, and sometimes even beyond the borders of the region where they grew up the longer stays and more difficult goals to achieve the greater probability for the experience of this process. Culture shock will not affect most tourists, who are going to holiday for two weeks, but is likely to affect student's in a language school, which will live for a month in the rhythm of the new country and its people, especially when it is accommodated in a student’s residents or renting a room from a local family. It seems inevitable for people who travel for half a year or longer, such as contract workers, immigrants and students who are going to Erasmus international exchange programs. Culture shock arises and increases slowly, as the growing number of unpleasant and difficult events, and the accompanying negative emotions accumulate. Culture shock is a phenomenon involving the functioning of people in mental, physical and social level, as a result of the difficulties encountered in the host culture difficulties, and its essence is experiencing negative emotions, which are accumulating, result in the deterioration of general well-being and satisfaction with life, and thus human functioning. Departure for a long time from the home university and stay in a foreign culture causes many problems in first weeks at many levels and returning back to the stable state can be difficult or even impossible for some people. Loads of British students are choosing hot countries as Spain as I did also. However, as I’m already international student in England from East Europe going to south of Europe was a natural