Preparing to leave home and go to college is always an exciting time, even more so for young people planning to study in an entirely different country. The prospects of learning about a new culture by immersing oneself in it, making friends, and practicing your language skills are only some of the thrilling aspects of studying abroad.
However, leaving a familiar environment to pursue academic advancement has its challenges, too.
Besides learning new ways to deal with personal finances and homesickness, handling relationships with professors and roommates, and making sure to get all assignments done on time, there are quite a few specific challenges students often face when studying a long way from home.
Among the most prominent ones, there are troubles with writing academic essays, and these can turn out to be more complex than most people think.
Writing in a new country: a multi-layered challenge
Crossing a border into an unfamiliar land is a turning point for many students. Not every relocation is necessarily expected to induce a cultural shock (at least not in the same degree), but the fact remains that living in a new country means learning to live by different rules.
These rules may apply to laws and regulations one must become accustomed to, but there are also many other things that make a mark on the life of a newcomer. For students, this means learning to appropriately greet others, create bonds and friendships, speak the new language inside and outside of a classroom, and much more.
Dealing with differences in academic practices
One of the specific academic difficulties is undoubtedly getting accustomed to different teaching styles. The language barrier is often making this aspect of the life of a foreign student even more troublesome, but adapting to a new teaching style is a challenge on its own.
It’s the differences in academic practices that often make the transitions a bit (or a lot) more difficult than foreign students might have anticipated. Although this critical aspect of studying abroad becomes easier to handle in time, it still may significantly affect the students’ ability to handle college papers assignments. It takes time to fit into a new academic environment, and this often leaves a trace on a foreign student’s ability to deliver their written assignments in an appropriate form and on time.
Catching up with referencing and citation styles
Every college student knows that writing an academic piece takes a lot of preparation, which includes in-depth research, reading the works of distinguished authors who covered the related topics, preparing an outline, and much more.
However, it’s not the approach to writing a college essay that proves to be challenging. It’s complying with regulations concerning referencing and citation that often confuses foreign students. It often takes some time before these scholars can become more in tune with new academic writing-related practices.
Finding the tutors prepared to offer assistance
Whether a person is inclined to become a good carpenter or a fine essay writer, practice makes perfect, and having a tutor to help along the way can make a huge difference. When studying in a foreign country, however, some students struggle with finding a professor who could provide the necessary support when it comes to their writing.
This struggle rarely stems from professors’ lack of desire to assist when they’re needed, though. In some densely populated colleges and universities, professors simply lack the time to dedicate themselves fully to one student at the time. As a result, scholars coming from abroad can feel neglected and their motivation can take the hit.
Resources to help foreign students live and learn abroad
Although changing a climate and cultural environment can be challenging, many young people who opted for studying abroad testify that this move represents a life-changing experience they never regretted – quite the contrary.
Many of them, in addition, gladly recommend several online resources that can help anyone living and studying away. Here are the most important tools.
- Mendeley, a free reference manager and academic social network, helps students with a broad spectrum of academic activities, including generating bibliographies automatically, locating relevant papers based on what they’re reading, collaborating with other researchers, and much more.
- Google Scholar is a specialized web search engine created to help students and researchers look for results across many disciplines to find relevant articles, theses, books, abstracts, and much more.
- PlagTracker is a go-to tool for discovering plagiarism in academic papers used by students, professors, publishers, and website owners. It supports 6 world languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian.
- Grammarly, a highly useful AI-powered spell and grammar checker, is often used by foreign students coming from non-English speaking countries. It helps not only discover grammar and spelling errors, but also suggests changes able to improve clarity, engagement, and delivery of the text.
Lucy Benton is a marketing specialist, business consultant and helps people to turn their dreams into the profitable business and currently provides assignment help