International Students’ Adaptation in Russia: its Varying Due to the Student’s Culture of Origin

The study aims to identify peculiarities of sociocultural adaptation (factors, coping strategies and anticipatory competence) of students from India, China and Arab countries. The research is based on the data obtained from the first-, secondand third-year students from India (73 respondents), China (45 respondents), Arab countries (64 respondents). The “Russian language proficiency” factor shows more significance for students from India and China, compared to students from Arab countries. Students from China, India and Arab countries tend to start and maintain relationships, to participate in academic activities, to have hobbies and interests and interact with other students. The prosocial coping strategy is predominant for Arab, Indian and Chinese students, regardless of their culture of origin, which proves universality of the strategy. Representatives of a polychronic culture (students from Arab countries and India) lack temporal anticipatory competence, with Arab students showing the lowest value of this parameter. Chinese students differ from representatives of a polyactive culture (Arab students) or a reactive-polyactive culture (Indian students) as they can hardly predict how a person they know would act in a certain situation.


Introduction
In the 21st century, many universities have chosen to internationalize their activity and give this new strategy the highest priority since the number of international students, as a rule, indicates the level of success for an institution in the global market of educational services. For international students to become active participants of various elements of the social environment, they need to adapt to the educational environment of an institution, which constitutes a vital condition and a means of socializing. This process may be complicated by a number of barriers such as linguistic differences, everyday life practices, climate, culture, ethnicity and motivation of the students. Having successfully adapted, foreign students can adequately interact with the sociocultural and intellectual environment of the institution, experience psycho-emotional stability, form new personality traits and obtain a certain social status, new social roles, find new values and realize the importance of traditions in their future professions [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Many recent research papers have analyzed the problem of adaptation to the educational environment of an institution [7][8][9][10][11][12]. However, these papers studied this process as in the case of Russian informants. At the same time, there are also papers looking into the problem of international students' adaptation [7-10; 13-15]. These works seem inadequate or insufficient: they either appear mainly theoretical or deal with adaptation programs (developed in the course of the studies) which disregard specific cultural background of international students. In addition, research papers on international students' adaptation have a number of obvious contradictions between the general interest in adaptation and the variety of approaches to the definition of adaptation: criteria vary and so do approaches to classifying these criteria. There is also a discrepancy between the amount of empirical data on international students' adaptation and an actual absence of papers exploring the peculiar methods to predict problematic situations that foreign students may experience in their adaptation and help students cope with them; between the amount of empirical data on international students' adaptation and the absence of works aimed at revealing coping strategies and factors of successful adaptation of foreign students in line with their cultural affiliation.
With this background, the present research is highly relevant and innovative because it explores the specifics of adapting to the environment of Russian higher education institutions as affected by cultural background of international students. The goal of the present research is to study the peculiarities of adaptation demonstrated by international students depending on their culture of origin. defining the term "culture". Culture is determined by the level of person's awareness, by communication inside and outside a group, by the strength of person's cultural system [11; 16]; by attitudes to various activities and planning [12; 16-19]; by relationship with the in-group and out-groups [20]. Students from India, Arab countries (Morocco, Syria) and China represent different types of cultures, which will be characterized individually.

Adaptation to the environment of a higher education institution
India is a low-context polychronic culture that balances between polyactivity and reactivity [16; 20-22]. Indian culture is one the most ancient world cultures. Researchers describe India as a country of enormous variety, demonstrating a multitude of occupations, highly diverse beliefs, a wide range of traditions and a veritable feast of various points of view [22]. Society and culture of India are contradictory in many ways. People in India strive for material well-being, value success in business and highly praise creativity, especially in technology [17; 19; 23]. On the Hofstede scale of individualism vs. collectivism (2008), India is close to the world average. The earlier research demonstrated that Indian students were not different from American in the dimension of individualism [24]. While India was traditionally labelled as a high-context culture, recent studies suggest that India is rather identified as a low-context culture [21; 22; 24].
Chinese culture is a high-context reactive culture with a high level of collectivism. According to E. Hall, in countries with high cultural contexts, their inhabitants do not need much information or clarification on the future events in a day-to-day communication because they already have an idea of what is going to happen, and they find many things predictable [12; 16]. In high-context cultures, a significant part of things is described and defined by the non-linguistic context: people's behavior, reactions, appearance, hierarchy, status. As for polychronicity and monochronicity of Chinese culture, the jury is still out on it. A. Serikov points out that schedules and working hours in Chinese culture are flexible, which is characteristic of polyactive cultures; however, punctuality is strictly observed, which is typical of monoactive cultures. What is specific for Chinese culture is the value of doing things right on time, as well as the value of doing what is best in the current, ever-changing, situation [25].
Arab countries may be characterized by a polyactive, polychronic and high-context culture. History of research demonstrates that Arab students from different countries have different abilities when it comes to studies. Generally, students from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia achieve better results than students from other Arab countries. This can be explained by the educational system that was established in those three countries during French colonization. Students have necessary skills allowing them to extract the general idea from a text, they can work independently and take notes of a lecture or a study text. They see a teacher, above all, as a person who communicates with them and is interesting to them, primarily as a source of new information [26].

Research organization and methods
Selection of informants. The present research is based on the data obtained from the first-, second-and third-year students from India (73 respondents), China (45 respondents), Arab countries (64 respondents). The informants are currently studying in higher education institutions of Perm, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Kazan, Saratov, and Ekaterinburg.
The first group of informants included young Chinese people studying in Russia, 45 people in total, 21 males and 24 females, aged from 18 to 24 (22 years old on average).
The second group of informants was composed of students from Arab countries (Morocco, Syria), of an average age of 23 (33 male and 29 female respondents).
The third group included 73 Indian students (39 males and 24 females) who had been studying at Russian institutions of higher education for 1 to 3 years, specialized in humanities and technical science. The average age of informants was 23.

Methods for evaluating the adaptation of international students to the environment of Russian higher education institutions, depending on their cultural affiliation
In order to find out the peculiarities of international students' adaptation to the environment of Russian higher education institutions, depending on their culture, we performed a complex socio-psychological research. We used the following methodical tools: 1. Anticipatory competence test [27; 28]. The present method uses a questionnaire containing 81 statements. Informants have to evaluate to what extent they agree with the statements using a 5-point evaluation scale. Next, the score is calculated for three components of anticipatory competence: personal and situational, spatial and temporal, plus the general level of anticipatory competence. The method was approved by V. D. Mendelevich and G. D. Khafizova in 2007 [27]. The large spectrum of possible applications of this method allowed us to use it as a basis for our research, since time management and communicative peculiarities may be determined by cultural differences [6; 17]. [29].

Strategic Approach to Coping Scale -SACS
S. Hobfoll sees coping behavior as a combination of cognitive and behavioral actions depending on the situational context. Adaptation of this theory made by N. E. Vodopianova and E. S. Starchenkova is designed to detect preferences for certain coping strategies in problematic (stressful) situations. The suggested model has 2 main axes (prosocial vs. asocial, active vs. passive) and one additional axis (direct vs. indirect). The axes indicate the dimensions of general coping strategies.
The method represents a questionnaire containing 54 statements; the respondents have to express their agreement or disagreement with the statements using a 5-point scale. After that, a score is calculated for each scale according to the key: "assertive actions", "initiating social contact", "seeking social support", "cautious actions", "impulsive actions", "avoidance", "indirect actions", "asocial actions", "aggressive actions". 3. The "Revised Sociocultural Adaptation Scale" questionnaire [30]. The method is based on a questionnaire containing 21 statements. The respondents use a 5-point scale to assess to what extent they agree or disagree with the statements; then a score is calculated according to the key for each of the 5 scales contained in the method and formulated as a result of the exploratory factor analysis using the method of main components, with Varimax rotation of the correlation matrix (interpersonal communication, academic performance, community involvement, ecological adaptation, language proficiency). The method was tested and adapted in the Ph. D. dissertation by Jessie Kaye Wilson in 2013 [30].

Results of studying the peculiarities of adaptation demonstrated by representatives of a high-context and reactive culture (Chinese students)
The analysis of the results obtained from the "Revised Sociocultural Adaptation Scale" questionnaire [30] which is oriented to defining factors of sociocultural adaptation is given in Tab. 1. As seen from the data on Chinese students in Russian institutions, the higher values are associated with the "interpersonal communication" on socio-cultural adaptation scale. This means that Chinese students would normally take part in social life, show empathy, build and maintain relationships and can adjust their behavior to the rules, norms, beliefs and connections with other people. It is to be noted that Chinese students are more inclined to seek support from their countrymen who also came to Russia to study, and they rarely try to establish communication with representatives of out-groups, who are, in this case, Russian students and international students from other countries.

Tab. 1. Factors of adaptation as demonstrated by Chinese students
The results of the research demonstrated that Chinese students mostly struggle with academic adaptation (adaptation to the study process). By academic performance, we mean participating in academic activities, being actively involved in the study process, and getting accustomed to the new educational standards. The data related to adaptational mechanisms and coping strategies that were obtained using the "Strategic Approach to Stress" method [29] are given in Tab The Chinese who study in Russia demonstrated a dominance of the prosocial coping strategy, which means that their prevailing adaptational mechanisms include seeking social support and initiating social contact. High contextuality of Chinese culture implies a high level of collectivism and stability of China's own cultural system, which also entails difficulties in establishing communication with representatives of other cultures. This is the cultural trait of Chinese students that stands out the most, compared with Arab and Indian students. Respondents belonging to this type of culture would join their effort with other people to solve a problem, seek advice from people who they closely related to, they do not hesitate to ask for help, but mostly seek it from representatives of the same in-group. In difficult times, they appreciate emotional support from relatives and friends.
Adaptational mechanisms of avoidance and assertive actions were less likely to be shown by the respondents. Chinese students may find it hard to say no when asked to do something, they feel awkward when people praise them and give them compliments. They are less likely to manipulate other people, play along with them or adapt their behavior to match other people's needs, or hide the truth in order to achieve their goals.
The results of the "Anticipatory Competence Test" [19], designed to define components of anticipatory competence in Chinese students, are given in Tab The data in the table above allow to conclude that values related to the parameter of interpersonal and situational anticipatory competence, as well as spatial competence, shown by Chinese students are lower than the threshold value (which is 166 for the parameter of interpersonal and situational anticipatory competence, and 52 for spatial anticipatory competence). The Chinese, as representatives of a highcontext and reactive culture, have high prognostic validity (the value is higher than 42). This shows in the fact that Chinese students in Russia are rarely late for class or meetings because of eventualities; they like planning their time up to smallest details and minutes; they track down their tasks for the day (week, month), planning how much time they will spend doing one or another task. Because they practice such behavior, the respondents expect the others to do the same, and they dislike it when someone is late for a meeting with them or otherwise lacks punctuality.
Therefore, interpersonal communication and establishing social contact are important to the Chinese as they represent a reactive and high-context culture. However, collectivism (as a consequence of high-contextuality and reactivity) does not let them properly anticipate problematic situations related to communication. The strategy of choice for Chinese students is the prosocial strategy of behavior which is expressed in a specific adaptational mechanism: seeking social support. High temporal anticipatory competence demonstrated by Chinese students is more expressed than other components of prognostic validity.

Results of studying the peculiarities of adaptation demonstrated by representatives of a high-context, polychronic and polyactive culture (Arab students)
The analysis of the results obtained from the "Revised Sociocultural Adaptation Scale" questionnaire [30] which is oriented to defining factors of sociocultural adaptation allowed to detect problems that students from Arab countries had while adapting to the environment of their institution (Tab. 4).
The respondents received high scores on the sociocultural adaptation scales of "interpersonal communication" and "interests and community involvement". Interpretation of the obtained data allows to say that Arab students are more eager to interact with other people, to take part in mass events, they have hobbies and interests and are more inclined to participate in academic activities and perform their work duties. At the same time, ecological adaptation does not seem difficult for this group of international students: they can easily adapt to a different density of population and climate conditions. Polychronicity of Arab culture implies that Arab students eagerly communicate and socialize. The study of the peculiarities of Arab students' adaptation allowed to identify some typical coping strategies and adaptational mechanisms. The results obtained by the "Strategic Approach to Coping" method [29] are given in Tab. 5.

Табл. 5. Копинг-стратегии у арабских студентов
Copingstrategies Models of behaviour Students from Arab countries demonstrated dominance of the passive coping strategy and adaptational mechanisms like cautious actions and avoidance, as well as the prosocial coping strategy which expresses itself as willingness to initiate social contact. Arab students usually do not give up when facing problematic situations, they tend to help others solve their problems, weigh every possible solution carefully and "save" their energy, often delaying the moment of solving the problem out of hope that the problem will resolve by itself. Also, Arab students are less prone to asocial and aggressive actions which may find their way out in the asocial strategy of coping with stress. They never put their personal interests above everything else, they rarely demonstrate power and superiority to reinforce their authority. High contextuality implies high density of informational networks, close contact between family members or friends, etc. The passive coping strategy of Arab people studying in Russia can be explained by their high-context culture, namely, by the stability of their cultural system and the density of information networks inside a group. The results of the "Anticipatory Competence Test" [28], designed to define components of anticipatory competence (ability of predicting difficulties) in Arab students, are given in Tab. 6. As seen from the results demonstrated in Tab. 6, Arab students tend to have better developed personal and situational anticipatory competence, as well as motional, compared with temporal anticipatory competence: this can be seen in the limits of normal development of respective types of anticipatory competence. The ability to predict situations related to communication is higher than the threshold value, in other words, students are able to predict how another person will act in various situations; they always try to anticipate potential threats before acting on something; lack of information makes them struggle; at the same time, such people are often taken advantage of and deceived by others, their success may not be adequately rewarded, and they tend to analyze the past, to seek understanding of the causes of their misfortunes, to replay possible outcomes of the past events in their mind over and over again. The underdeveloped temporal anticipatory competence (the value is under 42) shown by Arab students is due to the polychronicity of their culture, and their interpersonal and situational anticipatory competence is linked with their polyactive culture.
On the whole, analyzing the peculiarities of Arab students' adaptation to educational environment of Russian higher education institutions results in the conclusion that Arabs, being representatives of a polyactive culture do not experience difficulties communicating with other people. They use prosocial and passive coping strategies. While the general level of anticipatory competence shown by Arab students is quite high, it is necessary to mention their lack of chronorhythmological anticipatory competence.

Results of studying the peculiarities of adaptation demonstrated by representatives of a low-context, polychronic culture balancing between polyactivity and reactivity (Indian students)
The analysis of the results obtained from the "Revised Sociocultural Adaptation Scale" questionnaire [30] which is oriented to defining factors of sociocultural adaptation are given in Tab. 7. The analysis of the data obtained shows that Indian students, as representatives of a low-context, polychronic and polyactivereactive culture, have the highest scores on the scales of "socio-cultural adaptation" and "interests and community involvement". Belonging to a culture balancing between polyactivity and reactivity, Indian students are eager to interact, to participate in social events, have hobbies and interests, and seem actively motivated to take part in academic activities and complete work tasks.

Factors of adaptation
Studying peculiarities of adaptation shown by representatives of a low-context, polychronic culture that may be characterized by a middle position between polyactivity and reactivity, revealed their typical adaptational mechanisms and coping strategies. The results obtained using the "Strategic Approach to Coping" method [29] are given in Tab. 8.
Indian students show a preference for the prosocial coping strategy which expresses itself in this case as seeking social support. Indian students turn to their friends and relatives to ask for advice, they do not hesitate to ask others for help and support. At the same time, they rarely resort to asocial coping strategies, just as other representatives of a polychronic culture: Arab students. The prevailing coping strategy for Indian students, which is the prosocial strategy that makes them seek social support, is explained by the polyactive and reactive type of their culture. The passive coping strategy, on the contrary, has no connection with the specifics of their culture.
The results of the "Anticipatory Competence Test" [28], designed to define components of anticipatory competence (ability of predicting difficulties) in Indian students who study in Russia, are given below (Tab. 9). Based on the data received during the research and represented in the table, the value of the parameter of interpersonal and situational, as well as spatial anticipatory competence demonstrated by Indian students in Russia is higher than the suggested norm. This means that Indian students are able to predict problematic situations related to communication and anticipate the movement of objects in physical space, in order to coordinate their own movements. At the same time, temporal and chrono-rhythmological anticipatory competence, which is understood as the ability to predict the flow of time and distribute it accordingly, is not typical of Indian students who represent a polychronic culture. It is worth mentioning that Indian culture is characterized by clearly expressed polychronicity, unlike the Arab and Chinese cultures. Polychronicity of culture is the underlying reason for low temporal anticipatory competence.
Therefore, Indian students demonstrate the dominance of the prosocial coping strategy and the "interpersonal communication" adaptation factor, which may be explained by the fact that their culture can be described as polyactive and reactive using the typology created by R. Lewis. Indian culture is the most polychronic out of the four cultures studied; consequently, Indian students demonstrate lacking chronorhythmological anticipatory competence: they are not punctual and cannot anticipate events related to time.

Discussion and interpretation of the collected data
The analysis of the collected data on sociocultural adaptation of international students depending on their cultural affiliation gave the following results: 1. We found out the common tendencies in adaptation of international students. It was established that the prosocial coping strategy is the dominant strategy for Arab, Indian and Chinese students, regardless of their culture of origin, which means that this strategy is universal. Whichever culture they belong to, international students who adapt to an unfamiliar culture tend to get together with other people in order to find a solution, ask their friends and relatives, do not hesitate to seek help or advice. 2. It was found that the main difficulty for all the groups of foreign students was the need to communicate in Russian (which corresponds to the "Russian language proficiency" factor). The analysis of data has shown that students from all types of cultures have equal prevalence of the factors known as "interpersonal communication" and "interests and community involvement". It is typical of students from China, India and Arab countries to start and maintain relationships, to partake in academic activities, to have hobbies and interests and interact with other students. 3. We explored the specific ways of predicting problematic situations (anticipatory competence) typical for international students as they adapt to a new educational institution. Representatives of a polychronic culture (students from Arab countries and India) lack temporal anticipatory competence, with Arab students having the lowest value of this parameter. Students from India and Arab countries are less able to predict the time flow and distribute time adequately. They are often late, have troubles estimating how much time an activity will take up, they are not always punctual and cannot plan their commuting precisely enough to arrive on time.
They also rarely track down their activities and use planners, unlike students from China. At the same time, Chinese students demonstrate the lack of personal and situational anticipatory competence. What makes them different from representatives of a polyactive culture (Arab students) or a reactive-polyactive culture (Indian students) is that they can hardly predict how a person they know would act in a certain situation. Before taking action, Chinese students do not try to anticipate potential threats, they rarely think what could happen if they get expelled from university or fired. Representatives of a high-context, reactive culture (the Chinese) demonstrated a lower level of general anticipatory competence.

Conclusion
The data we obtained, which include the peculiarities of coping strategies, factors, adaptational criteria and the skill of predicting situations related to communication, perception of time flow and time management, may provide a foundation for adaptation programs designed for students of different cultural backgrounds. This is the main pedagogical value of the research: as it was found earlier, the existing adaptation programs for international students do not take into account cultural specifics of students coming from various countries. Both the adaptation program and the organization of education itself have to align with cultural differences of students.