Homestay Questionnaire&Interview Questions

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HOMESTAY QUESTIONNAIRE RESULT

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Are Homestay Students at Risk?

Asian homestay students 'extremely vulnerable'

Almost a quarter of female high school students from Asia who are living in B.C. without their parents say they've been sexually abused, according to a University of B.C. study published Tuesday.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=a616c000-44f3-41d1-80ea-5756ab55f339

Asian homestay students at risk of sex, drugs, abuse
http://www.ctvnews.ca/asian-homestay-students-at-risk-of-sex-drugs-abuse-1.532098


The unmet health needs of East Asian high school students: are homestay students at risk?
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41995450?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104342988703

Abstract
OBJECTIVES:
Most "homestay" high school students come to Canada from East Asian countries such as China, Korea and Japan to attend school while living with another family. Our objectives were to examine: 1) the characteristics of homestay youth compared to immigrant and Canadian-born East Asian youth and 2) whether their health risk behaviours are similar to immigrant or Canadian-born East Asian youth.
METHODS:
We used the 2003 British Columbia Adolescent Health Survey to examine characteristics of East Asian youth and their health risk behaviours, including sexual behaviours, substance abuse, abuse history, and health status. Homestay students were those not born or raised in Canada and not living with their parent(s) or in foster care. Multivariate models tested for the independent association of student group, controlling for age.
RESULTS:
Homestay students (weighted n = 3,085) were older, on average, than immigrant or Canadian-born youth and spoke a language other than English at home (p < 0.001). Multivariate analyses showed that homestay students were more likely to engage in sexual behaviours than other youth and over 4 times more likely to have used cocaine. Female homestay students were 3 times more likely to be a victim of sexual abuse and were also 3 times more likely to use a substance prior to sex.
CONCLUSION:
Homestay students remain a forgotten and extremely vulnerable group of youth, in part because they have special living arrangements. No one is currently held accountable for their health or safety. In the absence of health policy about homestay students, public health officials and providers have a central role in ensuring the former's health is not threatened.

Homestay Guide

Homestay Times and the Essential Guide for Homestay Students in North America

http://www.homestayguide.com/homestay/index.htm

How to Choose a Homestay?

Many schools in the U.S. keep a list of Homestay Agencies that they recommend to potential students. If they do not, a student will need to search for one on their own.

http://www.internationalstudentguidetotheusa.com/articles/choosing-a-homestay.htm

Background Research 2

Written Sources

CTVnews

Asian homestay students at risk of sex, drugs, abuse

Foreign homestay students attending high school in B.C. appear to be more greatly exposed to major health risks, including smoking, drug use, early sexual intercourse and sexual abuse.

Focusing on East Asian students, who comprise the majority of homestay students in B.C., Wong and her team analyzed data from the 2003 B.C. Adolescent Health Survey conducted by the McCreary Centre Society.

They captured self-reported results of about 3,000 Chinese, Korean and Japanese students between Grades 7 and 12. The researchers were unable to get statistics from the province but estimate there are 3,000 to 5,000 international homestay students in B.C. high schools.

Compared to immigrant or Canadian-born East Asian teens, they found that homestay students were twice as likely to be sexually active, and 23 per cent of homestay girls reported sexual abuse compared to nine per cent of their female peers.

Homestay students were also two to six times more likely to report using cocaine, half skipped school in the month before the survey -- compared to a quarter of peers -- and 20 per cent were smokers compared to five to nine per cent of peers.

"It really looks like a pattern that some of these kids may be sexually exploited," said UBC professor Elizabeth Saewyc, research director at the non-profit McCreary Centre which developed the survey.

"Are we taking care of other people's kids as well as we're taking care of our own?"

Vancouver SunJuly 14, 2010

Asian homestay students 'extremely vulnerable'

Almost a quarter of female high school students from Asia who are living in B.C. without their parents say they've been sexually abused, according to a University of B.C. study published Tuesday.

Key findings from the study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health:

- Twenty-three per cent of female homestay students reported having been sexually abused compared to nine per cent and eight per cent of immigrant and Canadian students, respectively, who live with their parents.

- A higher portion of both male (24 per cent) and female (25 per cent) homestay students reported having sex than the immigrant (about nine per cent) and Canadian-born students (12 per cent).

- They were more likely to smoke, binge drink and use cocaine.

- Fifty-four per cent of male homestay students spent more than four hours a day on the computer for recreation compared to 30 per cent and 35 per cent of immigrant and Canadian students living with their parents.

Gooverseas.com

The Pros and Cons of a Homestay Abroad

Homestays can be a rewarding experience and present an unrivaled opportunity for genuine cultural exchange.

1. Homestays can sometimes be the cheaper option.

2. Homestays can provide a more authentic cultural experience.

3. Homestay will force you to use the language with native speakers in a low-stakes setting.

Cons of a Homestay

1.     You must respect the rules and expectations set by your hosts.

2.     Exploring your new environment would difficult.

3.     Homestay may not be the best personal space to be 100% yourself.

International Student Guide to the USA

Choose a Homestay

1.     Information

Many schools in the U.S. keep a list of Homestay Agencies that they recommend to potential students.

If they do not, a student will need to search for one on their own. A simple Internet search will most likely yield a list of several agencies who offer placement. The job of the student and parents is to look for the agency that will work best for the student.

2. Communication:

From the get go, a student should feel that their questions, whether big or small, are being answered in a timely fashion. Typically, inquiries should be answered within 24 hours, keeping in mind an email sent on a holiday or weekend would be answered the next business day.

3. Contract

Books

Homestay Guide

There are hundreds of homestay programs across North America and thousands of students and host families taking part at any time. Participants range from 14-year-old high school students to 70-year-old retirees. The vast majority of high school students studying in the United States and Canada live with host families. As well, an estimated one-third of young adults attending ESL programs at colleges and private-sector language schools take advantage of homestay when it is offered.

"Most of them want to be in an environment where they can improve their English," says Katherine Macdougall, summer housing coordinator at the University of California in San Diego. "The second reason is that they want to experience American culture." A third factor, although not always stated, is safety.

Before the students even leave home, they may have totally unrealistic expectations about life with an American family. “They come here thinking that all Americans are very wealthy and that the houses are big and beautiful,” says Susan McKelvey, homestay coordinator with ELS in Philadelphia.

Asian International Student Transition to High School in Canada

"Asia students often hold negative perspectives of mental health problems, believe that family and close friends are in the best position to offer help, and generally do not understand the largely Western view of counselling services."

http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR15-6/popadiuk.pdf

Forum on Education Abroad

The complete interview with Lily von Klemperer is available in the AIFS/AIFS Foundation Education Abroad Special Collection.

http://www.forumea.org/standards-standards.cfm

Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad

http://www.forumea.org/documents/ForumEA-StandardsGoodPractice2011-4thEdition.pdf

East Meets West : An Infographic Portrait by Yang Liu

Infographic

Some of the unique differences between the East and the West.

http://www.visualnews.com/2013/10/02/east-meets-west-infographic-portrait-yang-liu/

Background Research 1

Thought Leadership（Include two parts: Eastern And Western Cultures/study abroad）

Eastern And Western Cultures

Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Written by Nisbett, Richard E.; Peng, Kaiping; Choi, Incheol; Norenzayan, Ara

“The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on "dialectical" reasoning, whereas Westerners, are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior……The authors speculate that the origin of these differences is traceable to markedly different social systems.”

East Meets West. Written by Liu, Yang, a Chinese designer lives in German. This series of works has been invited to exhibit at the German Foreign Ministry. In these works, red represents Chinese and blue represents Germany.

Treat kids

Study Abroad

Celeste Kinginger is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University, where she is involved in the education of language learners, teachers, and researchers. She is the author of Language Learning in Study Abroad: A Critical Reading of Research (Palgrave Macmillan) and of numerous other publications on related topics.

Language learning is an essential component of education abroad.

Marketing pressure affects study abroad programs.

Fostering optimal articulation between the U.S. target language curriculum and the host language programs outside the U.S.

Non-Governmental Organisations

A list of Common and famous NGO

ISEP

ACSE

CIEE

Cultural Homestay International

American Homestay Services

ISM-International Student Ministry

International Student

Massachusetts Service Alliance

United States SERVAS

AHN-USA

FOCUS (a Christian organization)

ANDEO

Global Student Services

Homestay in LA

International Student Placements

IHPS Homestays

Regency West Company

Student International Housing Inc. (S.I.H.)

Universal Student Housing

Study in the U.S.A.

GlobalPittsburgh

FIUTS

GLOBE NEWSWIRE

American Homestay Network

HomestayWeb

Information they provide

CIEE-Founded in 1947, CIEE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to quality exchange and global learning opportunities. Every host family can claim a flat $50 per month tax deduction as an American host family for the coming tax year. Exchange students only pay food and transportation fee to the host families.

ACES-American Homestay Services and American Homestay Network. Most of them have local coordinators. They work with four diverse communities-host families, exchange students, their local community and host schools. One of their responsibilities is supervising program participants and assisting with issues as they arise.

Most homestay service websites don’t provide any help after the students and the host family getting touched. Homestay Finder is one of the popular websites to help host families and students looking for a homestay to meet each other. Although Homestay Finder gives many tips for host families, like how to communicate with the guest, it does not provide any help after students staying with host families. It claimed, “if you are a host family or a person looking for homestay, it is your work to ensure that the counterpart fits your expectations. It is your own job to mitigate any risks.”

Another two popular homestay websites, Homestay Web and Homestay Booking, also have the similar claims. None of those websites is liable if the service provider does not fulfill its duties derived from its terms of use or if the guest is not satisfied with the service provider’s performance for any other reason.

Academic Research

Asian International Student Transition to High School in Canada

Natalee Popadiuk, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B. C., Canada

Many secondary school counsellors wonder how to best support international students from Asian countries. Unfortunately, there is a lack of academic literature that addresses unaccompanied minors studying in Canada and the United States (Leung, 2001)

They found that adolescent international students were a vulnerable group who were often not prepared in advance of their sojourn and who had difficulties adapting to the new country (Kuo & Roysircar, 2006). The students reported that they suffered from a lack of information about the host culture, as well as having little sense about the purpose of their sojourn, which added to the already difficult task of adjusting to a new cultural reality.

First, international students from Asia often hold negative perspectives of mental health problems, believe that family and close friends are in the best position to offer help, and generally do not understand the largely Western view of counselling services.

Secondly, school counsellors often do not possess the level of cultural competency needed to work effectively with international students from Asia.

International Education: Homestay Theory Versus Practice

K. Richardson

Homestay provides a unique family environment where different cultures intercept within the home. While homestay appears to be ideal, in practice there is uncertainty about the extent to which it fulfils the expectations of students, hosts and organisations alike.

Questions regarding the adequacy of training provided for homestay providers and hosts have also emerged. The issues arising in the unique environment of the homestay, such as cultural tensions, need to be addressed.

Written Sources

CHINA .ORG.CN

According to Larry Guo, director of Golden Source agency, 20 to 30 percent of students who find homestay families through the agency are dissatisfied with their host families. They encourage the students to communicate with the host family first.

HOMESTAY HIGHLIGHTS AND HURDLES, 1998 ESL MAGAZINE

Homestay - international students living with North American families - is a recipe for a wide range of experiences: culture shock, joyous relationships, miscommunication and intercultural learning.

Host family check: Home interview and inspection of the student’s room and the rest of the home. Criminal background.

Increasingly, homestay coordinators are asking families to provide evidence from the local police that they do not have a criminal record. The students invariably experience culture shock. Asian students, whose culture is so different from ours, often suffer most acutely.

The food was shocking. The differences between their home country and North America can be quite striking. Usually, participants get their image of American families from television or the movies and expect their host family to conform to that. Often, students come expecting that families will be able to spend endless amounts of time helping them with their English and explaining how North American society functions. They get a shock. Other common issues include:

Smoking; Dog picture Family pets; Courtesy;

Books

Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad, 4th Edition, 2011

Blue book of global talent 2013

In 2011-2012 Academic year, the U.S. has 6,932 Asian minors under 18 years of age who studied in America, and the number increased 16% over the previous year. More than 50% of those students chose to live with host families. The number is still increasing. However, 20% to 30% of students are dissatisfied with their host families because of privacy, food or other factors.

Midpoint Project

Topic:

Improving the relationship between Asian international students and American host families.

Problem:

Exchange students are often overwhelmed with a sense of strangeness, and also some host families do not know how to communicate with the students who are too shy to talk. Many Asian students are not taking advantage of homestay experience.

Outcome:

Let Asian students get along well with host families and take advantage from homestay program.

Audience:

1.     Asian International Students

14-18 years old exchange high school students from China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan who will live and are living with American host families.

2.     American Host Families

More information

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5DAZhbJF1fiR1pPRzdCOU5uaTg/edit?usp=sharing