Working or learning in a foreign country can be a difficult experience, both professionally and personally, because of the culture shock.
The hardest part of working abroad isn’t finding a place to stay or learning the language. It’s learning to overcome the culture shock. The anthropologist(人类学家) Kalvero Oberg first put forward the term “culture shock”. He reported that the culture shock was caused by the “anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse(社交) while living and working in another culture”.
These things are part of everyday life, and include many signs, gestures, facial expressions, and customs. When we enter a new culture, these cues(提示) are usually not present or so different that they’re no longer understandable to us.
“When a person enters a foreign culture,” wrote Oberg, “all or most of these familiar cues are eliminated. He or she is like a fish out of water. No matter how broad-minded he or she may be, lots of props(支柱) have been knocked out from the environment.”
This is what happened to Lara, a young IT consultant(顾问) from America moved last year to their company in southern Europe. Three weeks after she arrived in Europe, Lara sent a desperate e-mail begging to return home. “The people are so unfriendly,” Lara wrote. “They eat at strange hours and I’m starting to get allergic(过敏的) to the local food. I can’t get anything done because their way of doing business is so disorganized and so inefficient and I have a terrible skin itch because of the water. I want to come home!”
What Lara and other IT consultants meet on their first assignment abroad is a culture shock. While you can’t prevent the culture shock from happening, you can take some measures to cut down its effects.
21. What is the most difficult part for a foreign student?
A. Learning the foreign language. B. Adapting to the local culture.
C. Finding a right place to live. D. Entering a famous school.
22. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “eliminated” in Paragraph 4?
A. observed B. removed
C. solved D. measured
23. What happened to Lara when she arrived in Europe?
A. Her life got into a mess.
B. She worked more efficient than at home.
C. She couldn’t get on well with her colleagues.
D. She was out of condition because of the weather.
24. Why does the author describe Lara’s experience?
A. To show us where we’ll meet with the culture shock.
B. To show us how to adapt to the culture shock.
C. To explain to us what the culture shock is.
D. To tell us how she manages to work well.
25. What would be talked about in the paragraph that follows the last one?
A. Why Lara wants to come home.
B. Who will come across the culture shock.
C. What a person meets in a foreign culture.
D. How a person adapts to the culture shock.
