Adaptation of foreign students to the foreign culture learning environment using the Six Thinking Hats method

Abstract

The contemporary life is characterized by various ways and forms of communication, sometimes but not always successful and leading to conflict situations. When a man occurs in the environment, alien to him, he meets misunderstanding and is overwhelmed with incomprehensible emotions as if he were covered with an avalanche. He has to solve problems that seem quite unnecessary, not reasonable to him. As a result-the increased state of anxiety, which is warmed up by weak knowledge of the foreign language and cultural and social aspects. A foreign language teacher, whose task is to search for optimal teaching methods, oriented to the expectations of the group and facilitating favourable adaptation of each student with mental and social experience, characteristic only of him, is very helpful in this case. A set of methods, as a teaching approach offered in this article, has shown itself to good advantage as one of the rational and optimal methods used by a teacher who is not afraid of risking. The method assists foreign students in being involved in the university learning environment enabling them to use the most of interpersonal activity potential and basic motivation to perceive a foreign culture in the shortest possible time and with minimum losses. © 2015 by the author(s).