In my interview research, I especially focused upon imagery and metaphors in students’ narratives. Metaphors here are treated differently from in linguistic research where the focus might be on the formulation of metaphor. In counselling, metaphors are treated in a similar way to imagery and it is thought that imagery and metaphors can moderate difficult feelings often caused by talking about psychological issues (Morgan, 1996; Siegelman, 1990). For this reason, many counsellors use imagery and metaphors in their counselling practice and also for their own training. It is, therefore, appropriate to take this approach with metaphor in my research to explore international students’ psychological experiences. In the presentation here, I shall link these qualitative data with quantitative data from the questionnaires in order to give as rich a picture as possible.
Adjustment levels over the year
First of all, I will present the results of three psychological tests which I used in my questionnaires. They are Dundee Relocation Inventory (DRI) (Fisher, 1989), Cognitive Failure Questionnaire (CFQ) (Broadbent et al., 1982) and General Well-Being Schedule (GWB) (Fazio, 1977). The first test measures a degree of homesickness, the second test measures a level of psychological fatigue and the third test measures the individual’s well-being on the whole.
The average DRI score of the research participants in themiddle of the year was 32.48. Comparing it with the average DRI score (17.5) in Fisher’s (1989) study of homesickness in students, this clearly shows that the Japanese students suffered severely from homesickness. The students in Fisher’s study entered university in their own country, therefore they only moved from their home town to the town where their university is located. My research participants moved to a different country very far from their home country. It is natural that differences and unfamiliarity experienced by the students in the current study are greater than those in Fisher’s study. The result implies that the distance from home and the degree of differences and unfamiliarity in a host town are positively related to the degree of homesickness. It is also apparent that homesickness experienced by my research participants remained at the same level throughout the year, a question I shall return to below.
The higher the score the stronger the indication that an individual experiences more failures in perception, memory and motor function and is thus psychologically tired (Broadbent et al., 1982). The CFQ score for the
middle period was a mean of 42.74. This was higher than the CFQ score in Fisher and Hood’s (1987) study, where the score was 39.46 in the sixth week of the autumn term. This suggests that the participants in my research experienced psychological fatigue more severely and for longer.
The higher the score, the stronger the indication of good conditions inpsychological well-being. The GWB score is divided into three levels depending upon the score. The lowest level is from 0 to 55 and it is labelled ‘clinically significant distress’. The middle level is from 56 to 70 and it is called ‘problem-indicative stress’. The top level is from 71 to 110 and it is named ‘positive well-being’.
Each level is further divided into three to five sub-levels. Here I have just presented the lower and middle parts of the scale within which the students’ score fell. The black line is the average score of the Japanese students. The lower grey horizontal line is the border between severe and moderate in ‘problem-indicative stress’ level and the upper pale horizontal line shows the border with mild problem-indicative stress level.
Comparing the Japanese students’ scores to the standardised score of the GWB, we can see that the scores in all of the three periods reached problem-indicative stress level. The scores at the arrival and in the middle period indicate severe problem-indicative stress level. According to the above indications, the scores of the Japanese students over the year fall into the middle level, ‘problem-indicative stress’. In fact, scores at the arrival point and in the middle of the year are both in the severe level. At the end of the period, scores slightly went up, but not high enough to reach the moderate level.
All three psychological tests imply that the Japanese international students in the United Kingdom suffered homesickness and psychological fatigue and their general well-being level remained very low over the year.
Through examining the results of these tests, it is possible to grasp the students’ psychological conditions in general. Now, I would like to investigate what actually happened in their minds when they felt so tired,
lonely and unhappy. To do so, I would like to examine students’ narratives and the metaphors in the following subsections.
Read More : What happens in students’ minds when they encounter a new environment during the study abroad?
