International Students' Acculturation to a New Discourse Community

Pursuing educational goals in a cross-cultural context entails adjustments and adaptations to get acclimated to the host University. This study used a heuristic phenomenology approach to investigate a group of international students' acculturation experiences to the academic features of the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies (SLALS) at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, related to teacher-student roles and relationship, classroom teaching methodology and assessment of students' performance. The data revealed that international students had varying degree of difficulty adapting to the academic norms and conventions of SLALS.