The overseas student in Britain may also suffer from separation from his family and possible homesickness, enjoyment of his activities in Britain and the passage of time are the only real help here. Looking now at the cultural problems, we can see that some of them are of very practical nature, e,g. arranging satisfactory accommodation, getting used to British memory or the lack of it, British food and whether, neither is always bad.

Some of the cultural difficulties are less easy to define, they are bound up with the whole range of alien customs, habits and tradition, in other words, the British way of life.

Such difficulties include, settling into a strange environment and a new academic routine, learning a new set of social habits, ranging from the times of meals to the meanings of gestures, expressing appropriate greetings, understanding a different kind of humour, and learning how to make friends.

Being open-minded and adaptable is the best approach to some of the difficulties listed here. The largest category is probably linguistic. Let's look at this in some detail.

Most students will have learnt English at school, but if they've already been to college or university in their own countries, they'll have studied mostly in their own language except, perhaps, for reading some textbooks and journals in English. In other words, they'll have had little everyday opportunity to practice using English.