Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 1992 Sojourner Adjustment : A Diary Study Susan Elizabeth Hemstreet Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Applied Linguistics Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Hemstreet, Susan Elizabeth, "Sojourner Adjustment : A Diary Study" (1992). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4377. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.6261 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Susan Elizabeth Hemstreet for the Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages presented January 21, 1992. Title: Sojourner Adjustment: A Diary Study. APPROVED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE THESIS COMMITTEE: Maqone ~. Terdal, Chair Suwako Watanabe The focus of the ethnographic diary study is introduced and contextualized in the opening chapter with a site description. The thesis examines the diaries written during a sojourn of over two years in Japan . and proposes to answer the question, "How did the sojourner's initial maladjustment subsequently develop into satisfactory adjustment?" 2 The literature on diary studies, culture shock and sojourner adjustment is reviewed in order to establish standards of the diary study genre and a framework from which to analyze the diary. Using the qualitative methods of a diary study, salient themes of the adjustment are examined. The diarist's progression through the adjustment stages as proposed by the literature is supported, and the coping strategies of escapism, reaching out to people, writing, positive thinking, religious beliefs, compulsive behaviors, goal-setting and seeing the experience as finite are discussed in depth. In addition, several personal and situational variables peculiar to the diarist are isolated and analyzed. Recommendations for alleviating or mitigating the effects of culture shock are offered. A clear need for teacher-training programs, host culture orientation, cross-cultural communication training, and an empathic and well-adjusted host-culture 'mentor', preferably from the sojourner's home culture is demonstrated. Finally, the development of the diarist's conception of herself as a teacher is traced and explicated, with special attention paid to the evolution of the teaching self in the Japanese environment. Limitations to the study are included, as well as a discussion of the diary study as research topic. SOJOURNER ADJUSTMENT: A DIARY STUDY by SUSAN ELIZABETH HEMSTREET A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Ill TEACHING ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES Portland State University 1992 TO THE OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES: The members of the committee approve the thesis of Susan Elizabeth Hemstreet presented January 21, 1992. 1Vlar1one S. Terdal, Chair Suwako Watanabe APPROVED: C. William Savery, Interim Wee Provost for Graduate Studies and Research TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE LIST OF FIGURES . vi CHAPTER I IN'TRODUCTION ................................... 1 The Diary Setting . 2 Guiding Questions . 5 Reason for the Study . 7 II REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ....................... 9 The Diary Study in Second Language Acquisition Research . .9 The Tradition of Ethnographic Research in ESL Qualities of a Diary Study Published Diary Studies Disadvantages of a Diary Study Advantages of a Diary Study Applications of the Diary Study in ESL Research Culture Shock ................................ 24 Adjustment Curves Adjustment Stages Traditional Theories of Culture Shock More Recent Theories of Culture Shock Foreign Enclaves Sojourner Variables Culture Learning . 37 Basic Approaches to Cross-Cultural Training Suggestions for Further Research iv I I I METHODS ........................................ 45 Subject ...................................... 45 Instrument . 46 Procedures . 46 Analyzing the Diary IV ANALYSIS ....................................... 53 Creating a Life in Japan ........................ 53 The Adjustment Curve Adjustment Stages A Life in Japan Commitment Coping Strategies and Relevant Variables .......... 66 Escapism Reaching Out to People Writing Positive Thinking Religious Beliefs Compulsive Behaviors Goal-setting Seeing the Experience as Finite Personal Variables . 82 Fatalism Self-blaming Strong Preference for New Stimuli Push Orientation Propensity to Set Up Challenges Situational Variables .......................... 91 The Foreign Enclave The Japanese Community Being a 'Gaijin' in Japan Emergence of Biculturalism .................... 106 v V DISCUSSION ANDIMPUCATIONS................. 108 Findings and Evaluation....................... 108 Discussion of Adjustment Curve Evaluation of Adjustment Stages Evaluation of Coping Strategies Need for Teacher-Training Programs Need for Host Culture Orientation Need for Cross-Culture Communication Training Need for a Host-Culture 'Mentor' Limitations to the Study . 115 The Diary Study as a Research Topic............. 118 VI EPILOGUE . 120 The Teaching Persona . 120 The Development of the Teaching Self Conclusion .................................... 126 REFERENCES . 128 APPENDIX . 135 99 ........................ aA.Ino +uam+snfpv reuos.Iad v ·1 ~ DV d ~'Hfi Did S~'HilDid dO J.SI'l Simple-song When we are going toward someone we say you are just like me your thoughts are my brothers and sisters word matches word how easy to be together. When we are leaving someone we say how strange you are we cannot communicate we can never agree how hard, hard and weary to be together. We are neither different nor alike but each strange in our leather bodies sealed in skin and reaching out clumsy hands and loving is an act that cannot outlive the open hand the open eye the door in the chest standing open. - Marge Piercy CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION On April Fool's Day, 1987, I began my life as an English teacher in Japan. I lived in Japan for two and a half years, and while I was there, I kept a diary. Rather, while I was there, I continued to keep the diary I had been writing in one form or another for fourteen years. The entries I made while in Japan have been used for this diary study, an examination of sojourner adjustment and coping strategies. By using this diary, I am either betraying it by allowing it to be opened for research -- or fulfilling the diary's real purpose by finding it an audience. It has been helpful for me, examining the diary so closely, to think of this as a record of my younger self, someone separate from me now. I have dissociated myself so successfully from the writer of the diary that I had to fight to remind myself to use first person throughout, and not the 'her' and 'she' I used in my head. The diary included in the appendix begins in the autumn following my graduation from college. It records my frustrations with the Portland job market and my decision to go to Japan. The diary serves as a tool to register my impressions of Japan and my daily life as an expatriate. While reading the diary, one can trace an evolution in my attitude toward living there -- from excitement to dislike to appreciation. The major characters in the diary are the other international teachers and my Japanese colleagues. When I moved in with a Japanese 2 family, they became important in the diary, too. My students sometimes appear, as do my teachers. My friends and their families are mentioned, my family, my friends. All are subjects of the diary, but of course the central subject is myself. Myself and Japan. , THE DIARY SETTING To describe the setting of the diary, I will say that Seiki School is in Kagoshima, a city of approximately 500,000 residents located in the inner curve of Ginko Bay on the southern tip of the southern island of Kyushu. The weather is similar to that of the Pacific Northwest, except that summer is preceded by a rainy season and is intensely humid. The active volcano, Mt. Sakurajima, dominates the city literally and aesthetically, and the ash which either drifts or explodes out of the volcano's peak affects the weather patterns, usually by obscuring the sun and creating an ash-rain. During the winter, the ash blows south, away from the city, but in the spring the wind changes and the city is coated with fine grit. Spring also brings an increase in typhoon alerts; the city is especially vulnerable as it is situated on the lip of a bay which empties into the Pacific Ocean. Seiki Girl's School is situated on a hill overlooking the bay, and commands a good view of Mt. Sakurajima and the downtown area. The campus was in an architectural transition during my employment there; drab, unheated, exposed classrooms were replaced by high-tech, climate­ controlled, cheery buildings. Both the junior college and the junior and senior high schools were engaged in a kind of 'building war' to upgrade facilities as quickly as possible, and the teachers and students benefited 3 from the newly built indoor swimming pool, circuit training room and tennis courts, as well as the extensive library and audiovisual facilities. The number of native English speaking residents of the city at the time I lived there was approximately 40, of which the teachers employed by Seiki were a significant percentage. Thus the existence of a foreign enclave was predicted by the simultaneous isolation and propinquity of the foreigners at Seiki School. The school is a private, 'mission school' run by an order of Catholic nuns, all Japanese. However, less than 1% of the approximately 1200 students at Seiki are Christian. Religious instruction is not part of the curriculum; however, prayers are said before lunch, a short invocation is given before every class, and the Marian holidays are celebrated by the entire student body. I was the sole foreigner employed by the junior and senior high school. The more than seventy teachers at Seiki shared a large faculty room with desks in rows, facing each other: a very common office arrangement in Japan.