The Summary of Our Survey

Currently, we created a survey form for International students who are studying EAP 4 at Swinburne University about “Homesickness”. The number of survey sample is 10, who come from different countries such as Peru, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, China and Colombia. As a strategy for survey, we have a face to face interview that included two types of questions which are open-ended questions and closed-end questions.

According to this survey, we have the result that international students are attempting to adjust the gap of what they miss the most as well as when they feel homesickness the most and these gaps would bring them about the thing they missed the most and also the difficulty to find new friend in Melbourne.

Firstly, we found through this survey a reality that international students studying EAP 4 at Swinburne University usually face problems of homesickness. Our survey indicates that almost 100% of participants we interviewed have felt homesickness. Moreover, about 70% of participants have found that finding new friends in Melbourne is a bit difficult for them due to language and some different cultures. In addition, the thing that most international student missed the most is food. Five in ten people said that they miss their traditional food the most that was very surprised because as we have thought that they might have missed their family or friends the most. Most international students choose to talk with their family by using social media such as facetime, skype, messager, etc…

However, according to Kegel K. (P70, 2009), the study has shown that international students choose emotional feeling to deal with their homesickness problem such as feeling stress and crying. Other report is those who were not satisfied with their social network were more likely to report feelings of homesickness. Furthermore, international students whose actual lived experiences measure short of their expectations report significantly more homesickness. This implies many international students are forced on their emotional feeling to deal with their problems.

Moreover, we have found from Kolade L. (2017) who explained that there are six points to get over from homesickness for those who are in Freshman Year. Firstly, you need to understand that what you’re going through is normal. Other thing is that you need to get used to your new surroundings. Moreover, making a space for yourself at school is also another thing that you need to remember. However, you should try to stay connected with home, but you should not be too connected in case you will feel more depressed than before. In addition, trying to talk other at school means that you need to try to keep connection with your new friend at school. Being positive is also very common solution for every problem you have faced. So, due to those solutions, we can say that we don’t need to cry and feel stress because it will only make you feel badly.

Judging from the validity of research in terms of the size of the sample, we can't help saying the subjects is great. Therefore, we could conclude that international student, mostly for those who do not love to use social media for contacting, more likely feel homesickness and also use emotional feeling to deal with their problem. But we also can say that international students generally choose to talk with their family and friend to resolve their homesickness problem. In our survey, 80% of participants said that they choose to talk to their family and also some of them try to go out and travel to see new things outside.

Although most international students, who we interviewed, used to feel homesickness, but also there are some small amount of them never feel homesickness and they said it might be because their age is getting older and also they have traveled a lot. From this fact, we still can understand that international students and also some people who have departed from home will feel homesickness in someday.

In summary, we also have got many advises from those participants to solve homesickness problem such as trying to change attention from missing home to do other things like going out, making new friend and remember not to stay at your own room otherwise you will feel more homesickness than before. So that we can conclude that there are many solutions beside using emotional feeling as what we have described above.