PhD Student Profile

Ismatul Zaharin

Ismatul Zaharin

PhD Student

School: School of Language Studies and Applied Linguistics

Campus: Canterbury

Project title

'Study of Intercultural Communication with reference to the Malaysian students studying in the UK: understanding intercultural communication of Malaysian students in interactional contexts and explore the factors influencing it'

Research outline

Malaysian students’ enrolment into higher institutions abroad has been steadily increasing for some time now. The challenges imposed by international mobility are enormous. Students all over the world have to find their place in new, pluralistic societies comprised of people with different cultural and language backgrounds. The task to coexist, interact and communicate with each other is an everyday requirement and students’ interaction or communication in intercultural situations may or may not affect their study or main goal. Therefore, this study is important as it aims to explore intercultural communication among Malaysian students. This would include exploring what Malaysian students believe to be successful or unsuccessful communication encounters which help them to survive in a foreign country as well as discover what resources Malaysian students believe help them adapt to their surroundings.

This research pertains to existing literature which emphasises the increasingly important role of intercultural communication in language teaching, and the necessity to develop students' intercultural communication.

This study is particularly pertinent considering there were around 14, 545 Malaysian students studying in the UK in 2012 according to UKCISA statistics, and this number can only have grown and will probably continue to increase. It is hoped that this research will be able to provide suggestions to improve Malaysian students’ intercultural communicative competence, and perhaps offer scope for more research in this area and possibly influence future Malaysian education policy.

Supervisory Team

  • Professor Adrian Holliday (first supervisor)
  • Dr John Kullman (second supervisor)
  • Dr Lynn Revell (chair)

Teaching Experience

  • SMK Taman Desa (2013) English Language.
 

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Last edited: 05/12/2017 10:51:00