Culture Shock

The ability to communicate well in a foreign culture is considered as a set of learnable social skills. The notion of culture shock is introduced to cover a broad range of psychological and social reactions to immersion in another culture, many of them detrimental to communication. Programs aimed at reducing the harmful effects of culture shock are examined in terms of the strategies adopted: (1) information giving, (2) cultural sensitization, (3) isomorphic attribution, (4) learning by doing, and (5) social skills training (SST). The latter, it is argued, is the most effective.