Homesickness Case Study

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3. The personal factors of homesickness 3.1 Personality Some researchers found the relationship between homesickness and personality. “the vulnerability seems to be rooted in the personality of the homesick (-prone).” “it has been found that homesickness is especially related to rigidity” (Van Tilburg, Vingerhoets & Van Heck, 1999, p.193). When studying abroad, students might be more vulnerable than in their home country because they would experience the different culture or communication style. Communication skills could be one of causes of homesickness. Asai (2005) explained that some students who are not good at communicating when studying abroad: those who are not sociable and used to be a listener even in their home country, or those who do not have much confidence to express their opinion. Communication skills play a large part in studying abroad since it has related to other aspects, such as intercultural adaptation (Uemotsu, 2004) and support networks in the host country. 3.2 The Concept of “Enryo” It is assumed that students might face problems caused by the difference in…show more content…
In this study, language anxiety would be treat as only one of causes of homesickness, not as an influence of the usage of L2. Language anxiety is defined as “apprehension experienced by the individual in the target language class or any situation in which the language is used” (Gardner & MacIntyre, 1993, p.159). Young (1991, cited in Tajima, 2016) “lists the manifestations of anxiety, such as avoidance of L2 use opportunities and using short-answer responses” in the classroom about L2 anxiety. Tajima (2016) found that “language anxiety levels at post-return were significantly lower than their levels at pre-reparture” (p.116) and “pre-departure language anxiety significantly related to while-abroad homesickness”

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