Have you ever heard of the term, “writer’s block?” The term describes difficulties students may face when expressing themselves in the form of writing.

Many people who face this know what they would like to convey in their mind, however, when they actually phrase their thoughts, “the writers’ block” suddenly activates. As a result, their ability to express themselves is rendered helpless.

I have found that a large number of international students oftentimes experience “culture block” in American classrooms due to the different educational culture in their home countries.

In some Asian countries, teachers are perceived as an authority figure, and this perception strongly controls those students’ thoughts and behaviors.

These international students continue to bring this student approach into the American classroom due to the fact that most of foreign students came to America after graduating from high school.

If students come from a culture where the class atmosphere is teacher-fronted and not communicative, they would feel unfamiliar with the relatively interactive class atmosphere in America.

After I came to America, I learned that participating in group discussion or class discussion is extremely important in American classrooms.

In Korea, lecturing is the most common form of teaching, and students are required to show respect to teachers by listening to lectures without raising any questions. In American classrooms interacting with teachers and classmates is as important as listening to teachers’ lectures.

I was not sure how to participate in discussions, as I had never done such a thing in my classes in Korea. Many international students do not even understand what to do and in or how to do it an American classroom.

In my experience, first, I was not sure when would be the best time for me to raise my hand, and second, I was not sure how I would explain myself effectively. This experience is one of the examples of culture block, and I had to try hard to learn new educational culture.

It took me two years to finally participate in class discussion. Overcoming culture block requires a student’s persistence and support from faculty.

Some students might experience culture block subtly whereas other students might experience culture block more severely.

It’s hard to define the experience of international students briefly in a single sentence, because “international students” literally means students from all over the world.

International students occupy approximately 10 percent of the student general population at California State University, East Bay. The students from China represent the largest population as fifty percent of international students come from China. The other half consists of students from Saudi Arabia, Korea, India, Japan and so on.

This analysis on the international student population reveals that there are a variety of differences in multiple aspects between students from different countries.

During the winter quarter, international student panelists gave a presentation on their experiences at East Bay during the week of inclusive excellence.

In addition to covering issues related to language proficiency and unfamiliar classroom environments, the presentation covered how challenging writing can be to international students due to contrastive rhetorical traditions.

On top of the language proficiency issues, different writing strategies add another layer of difficulty, causing both culture block and writer’s block to activate.

The presentation covered how writing in their native languages and writing in English are different. In Korean, Chinese, and Japanese writing, writers are expected to convey main ideas implicitly, rather than explicitly to increase the reader’s participation, which is opposite to American writing custom.

This diverse population brings new insight and diversity to our campus. Embracing this diversity can be exceptionally valuable for our campus as it allows all students to broad their horizon on different cultures and enrich their culture experiences.

In order to do so, it is important for East Bay to create the environment that makes international students feel more welcomed.