MENTALITY OF FOREIGN STUDENTS IN ADAPTATION

Abstract

The article explores adaptation of foreign students to new cultural environment, which is an important modern problem and deals with development of education in the context of globalization. The relevance of this topic is explained by integration of different cultures, which takes place in the global world over the past decade. Training of foreign students is one of the prior tasks for Russian higher education. The researchers and policy makers speak about increasing number of foreign students in Russian universities, which can contribute to position and status of Russia in the world. However, learning and adaptation of students who are considered to be carriers of original mentality and culture, involves considerable difficulties. The paper reveals the characteristics of human mentality, as a manifestation of deep-seated attitudes of the collective consciousness of a people. Foreign students are carriers of a certain system of values and norms, which causes a kind of way of thinking and seeing the world. Sometimes vision of different cultures bases primarily on stereotypes, which may explain the distorted phenomena and processes of the surrounding reality. Adaptation to a new culture can become quite painful and not always be successful, which certainly reduces the effect of training. Thus, institutes have to take into account the mental peculiarities of foreign students (belief, values, norms, behavior patterns) and use them to improve the efficiency of learning and the integration of foreign students in the educational space of Russia.