Intercultural Communication Competence and Acculturation Dialectics: A Study on International Students in a Private University in Malaysia

The demand for higher education institutions to internationalize their practices is an indication of rapid globalization and transformation processes, contributing to change the of existing education system landscape. To be competitive globally, many universities open their doors to international students to fashion diversity to university’s settings, which in turns enriches and enhances university’s experiences for students. However, cross-cultural adjustment for international students can be challenging. Numerous researches have established that it is more susceptible for the international students to create their own circle and be detached from the local community; consequently, leads to social and cultural disassociation from host countries. Various studies reported that intercultural communication competence (ICC) is one of the exogenous factors for adaptation to exist. Thus, this study is aimed to probe the perceptions of international students towards the perceived nuances of communication competence, acculturation attitude and language acculturation. These established dimensions were measured by adapting Berry’s Acculturation Framework (1997). The results revealed that the acculturation strategies employed by the students in acquainting to the host culture have amplified their intercultural communication competence; hence, making them to be more culturally sensitive. Nonetheless, only 25% (N=3) of the participants were categorised as highly competent/ competent, suggesting that there are other contributing factors to language acculturation, as the notion of ICC is a profoundly incongruent and complex concept. The domain of inquiry could potentially contribute to the modelling of social programmes for educational institutions in Malaysia to increase the value of cross-cultural mobility’s significance for international students’ successful integration in the new environment.