Culture Shock Experienced By Thailand Students at Alauddin State Islamic University of Makassar

This research studied about culture shock experienced by Thailand students studying at Alauddin State Islamic University of Makassar. The aimed of this research were to describe and find out the process and the effects of culture shock experienced by Thailand students. This research used descriptive qualitative method and Collen Ward‟s Theory. Interview sheet as instrument of the research to seven respondents who are studying at Alauddin State Islamic University of Makassar . The researcher found that there are four processes of culture shock experienced by Thailand students. Such as honeymoon phase is first stage because of infrastructure, hospitality, the custom, beautiful scenery, and learning process of the host country. The second is the crisis phases because of cross cultural differences in how people communicate. The third is recovery phases, where they began recovery to accept, to resolve and to adjust their cultural differences. Finally is adjustment phase where they were enjoyed and accepted the cultural differences in the new environment. The resercher also found two effects of culture shock experienced by Thailand students. They are positive and negative effect. Based on the finding and discussion, the researcher concluded that Thailand students at Alauddin State Islamic University of Makassar experienced four processes and two effect of culture shock. The implication of this research is to give understanding about culture shock