International Students’ Intercultural Interaction with Canadian Domestic Students: Observations from Literature Review

Abstract

The main purpose of this review was to intensively review literature about to international students’ intercultural interaction with Canadian domestic students. More specifically, the review intends to (1) examine the status of international students’ intercultural interaction with domestic students at Canadian post-secondary schools. (2) identify the major challenges that limit the intercultural interaction between international and Canadian domestic students. To this end, various research documents, such as published and unpublished government documents, peer- reviewed articles, PhD dissertations, and empirical studies were consulted. In this review, studies conducted in other most popular study destinations for international students were also thoroughly reviewed to provide additional insight. The findings of this review indicate that at Canadian post-secondary institutions, the intercultural interactions between international and domestic students are few. The review findings further uncovered that English language proficiency and culture qualify as the main challenges for international students to make intercultural interactions with their domestic counterparts. Based on these findings, conclusions and implications were forwarded to hosting countries and institutions.