Penetration of culture and language in the language of third culture kids

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1

FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

FOR HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Department of Foreign Languages

Degree programme: Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication

Bachelor's degree thesis

Penetration of culture and language in the language of third culture kids

Khorotyan Diana

Academic supervisor:

Associate Professor N.E. Makarova

Moscow 2020

Table of contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 The origin of the term `Third Culture Kid' and its definition

1.2 Problem Statement and Purpose of the Research

1.3 Methodology

1.4 Limitations of the Study

Chapter 2. Literature review

2.1 Linguistic Environment

2.2 TCKs' Identity

2.3 Cognitive Flexibility

2.4 Educational trajectories

2.5 Adult Third Culture Kids

Chapter 3. Methods

3.1 Participants

3.2 The Design of the Questionnaire

3.3 Analysis of the Answers

3.4 Second Section

3.5 Face-to-Face Interviews

Chapter 4. Results

4.1 The Examination of Data

Chapter 5. Discussion

Conclusion

References

Appendix

Chapter 1. Introduction

People got an opportunity to travel and see the world, broaden their horizons and completely change their worldview. For some people travelling was a new experience or leisure activity while for others it was more of “being mobile”. For instance, international company where person worked offered them working abroad regarding both company's international status and the person's position within the company.

This way new businesses started to emerge on the market trying to achieve the status of being called “international businesses”. One of the primary goals of this kind of companies was to start a business abroad by running offices outside of an organization's homeland. This kind of an organization usually offers places for employees offering them an opportunity to move from one country to another one depending on their position. Thus, the main goal of authorities of such enterprises is to hire highly mobile staff in order to develop a company's professional image and make the organization recognizable in different parts of the world.

People got influenced by the effects of globalization in terms of gaining knowledge and they got exposed to new cultural environments. Very often employees do not have a clear image of the place where they were going to. Therefore, sometimes they felt lost and did not have a sense of belonging to a particular culture. Almost the same problem is faced by the migrant - a person who decided to leave their homeland not because they were offered a position abroad but because they seek better life in general. There are well-known factors that can make a person to leave their home country which values and norms they used to share with other people from their home country. Such factors usually include natural disasters, wars, seeking for better education or work opportunities. Hence, people have no choice but to leave their fatherland and move to completely different environment.

People have to make choices every day. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the situations when people leave their countries for traveling, migrating for better life or people who leave to work abroad. They all share the same characteristics as they all left their home countries; however, they have different stimuli for doing so. Compare three cases when an individual leaves the country:

An individual who leaves the country to travel and see other parts of the world with family;

A person who tries to find better life with their family;

A person who lives outside their home country because of their work.

In the first case a person being exposed to a new culture can choose not to accept new values, norms of that specific society and ways of living as they are there for a short period of time. In the second case a person who decided to migrate for better job prospects or better life gets influenced by a new culture. Not only do they experience a transformation of their well-established principles but also they start to behave differently. In this situation adults, being able to accustom to changes fast, can adapt to a new lifestyle more quickly than, for example, children or older people.

When parents or legal guardian of a child leaves the country there is no such thing as to leave a child. Meanwhile, in some cases infants look forward for new adventures, new friends and environment, others cannot manage to leave everything behind and so often feel obliged to move with their families and change a place of residence due to their parent's work opportunities. This way, children of people who decided to leave their country were called Third Culture Kids (TCK) by John and Ruth Useem (1999). They stated that when changing a place of residence children belong to at least two cultures - the one of their parents and the culture of the county they moved into and as a result such infants already possess one culture within themselves. What is fundamental is that there is the third culture that develops within a little person - the combination of two cultures and a child's own interpretation of this mixture. Third Culture Kids are considered to be the `by-products' of globalization. The main reasons of becoming a TCK is moving abroad because of the family member who is a legal guardian of an infant has to or decided to change the place of a residence.

TCKs' experience is very unique. As for being a TCK myself I should say that growing up was not that easy. My both parents are Armenians but I grew up in Russia in a very intercultural environment. During my first three years my parents and I have been traveling to Russia than back to Armenia, then back to Russia. During the 1990s my parents were seeking for jobs and eventually they found it in Russia and decided to move there. While growing up my parents were teaching me both Armenian and Russian. The process started with my father asking me simple questions and then my mother making it complex in Russian and repeating that so I was talking with my parents in both Armenians and Russian simultaneously. While being in school I noticed that I was making a considerable progress while learning English language and I could easily process a lot of information during classes. In University I chose my forth language which was Spanish and I would like to emphasize that my Spanish professor told pointed out once that I have an ability to easily learn languages and sound like a native. She highlighted that I had already gotten the pronunciation because, possibly, that comes from the knowledge of Armenian as we have a lot of letters and different sounds in alphabet that I can apply in many languages. After this talk I got curious whether that was true and I decided to talk with my fellow TCKs and conduct a survey that would reveal whether the knowledge of more than two languages helps not only to learn a new one easily but also facilitate the processing of information that benefits overall academic performance.

1.1 The origin of the term `Third Culture Kid' and its definition

The first time the term “third culture kid” was used by the sociologist Dr. Ruth Hill Useem when she moved to India with her husband and kids. They have been living there for some time and then returned back. Notably, they conducted a survey among families that returned back to the US where she was also living with her own family. Later after the survey they tried to identify some major tendencies in behavior and changes in the way people perceive the world after living abroad. Most importantly, in this case they were focusing on children.

Indeed, visualize a family spending time outside of their home country for a short period of time and the one actually migrating to unknown environment with an infant. Kids' emotions and their psychological state are fragile as they are only growing up and so they are mentally and physically vulnerable. Thus, it may be hard for them to adapt to unknown environment. Hence, a child living in these conditions goes through enormous psychological and mental changes in comparison with an adult who already possesses certain values and unchangeable ways of behaving. A number of researches have been studying the issues connected with the term of “Third Culture Kid” such as: the problem of the development of personal identity of a child, the matter of stereotyping typical behaviors of such infants in different social institutions and the psychological impact of belonging to two or more cultures. However, little has been done concerning the problem of academic performance of TCK and little attention has been paid to the way of processing information. Besides, not many works focused on the idea that these kids can actually process more information as they know at least two languages and that they possibly have benefits of being TCKs who are usually open-minded and great communicators as they were exposed to various cultures during their upbringing.

Indeed, Baumgartner (2011) assures that being a TCK and a child of immigrants are two terms that should not be confused as they are connected with different types of situation and circumstances. The author states that in the case of immigrants people just leave their country for better life or better job prospects having time to adjust to new cultural environment. In comparison, Third Culture Kids “move from country to country” and they do not really have enough time to adapt to the unknown environment and to feel like they belong to a particular culture.

1.2 Problem Statement and Purpose of the Research

It is a common knowledge that interacting with people of different cultural background is often tough as people use language, share values and particular worldview. People have to be culturally aware in order to avoid miscommunications, figure out what is different and try to accept it. In other words, people who travel or just decide to migrate have time to get used to a particular way of living and they have time to communicate with locals but a Third Culture Kid do not have this opportunity. Society is not the same in various places and it changes. Thus, it may be hard for a child to comprehend what is going on in their life, what culture they belong to and understand the patterns of behavior as different cultures, even if in the globalized world, might share similar values, however, share opposite views at the same time.

Erik Vyhmeister (2015) was constantly changing the place of living with his parents due to his father's work and now he does not feel like belonging to American culture even though he has an American passport. During his presentation on TED he points out that there are drawbacks and benefits of being a Third Culture Kid and Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK). Vyhmeister distinguishes some prominent factors that identify a Third Culture Kid and he illustrates major benefits and drawbacks of each one. These factors are: leave-taking, cultural balance, mobility, worldview, cross-cultural skills, relationships and development. Vyhmeister says that TCKs have to deal with educational systems in schools, colleges no matter where these children live. The main problems that he pays attention to are switching languages and school systems and the speaker identifies it as a challenge and a thing those kids have to deal with while living outside of their home country. However, he does not say anything about the actual advantages that these kids may have dealing with the switching of both languages and schools systems.

Possibly, TCKs are better at acquiring information as their brains more flexible as they have several cultures within themselves along with the knowledge of languages. Therefore, if they are to deal with a lot of information they probably show higher level of academic performance. Besides, in the modern world where the future life of a person depends on one's level of education Third Culture Kids may be in an advantageous position.

This study aims to identify major benefits of being a TCK in terms of learning experience comparing their level of academic performance with the one that children who do not have mixed cultural background have. The main objective is to identify problems of belonging to this particular group and how the knowledge of two and more languages helps a TCK in their academic performance.

The purpose of the research paper is to conduct an investigation and prove that Third Culture Kids show higher quality of academic performance than children with non-mixed cultural background due to the knowledge of at least two languages and belonging to several cultures. Since this group of kids has various cultural features within themselves they can possibly be able to retain, disclose and process information better. This paper aims to understand to which extent the idea that Third Culture Kids have benefits learning subjects is true and whether it truly affects one's academic performance. Therefore, the research is to give answers to the following questions:

1. How the knowledge of two or more languages influences the way a child absorbs, retains and processes information?

2. What are the main differences between the way information is processed by TCKs and infants with non-mixed cultural background?

3. Does integration of cultures result in benefits or problems for TCKs?

1.3 Methodology

This study will proceed to analyze how integration of language and culture positively affect a Third Culture Kid's manner of dealing with information based upon discursive analysis of the data. One of the main goals of the paper is to study the probable connection of academic performance and the knowledge of languages. The paper will employ qualitative research design including a questionnaire, face-to-face interviews and participant observation. Numerous sources will include case studies connected with the experience of TCKs in schools and universities, documents that contain statistics related to academic performance of TCKs, quantitative data collected from popular online scientific papers such as `BBC', `The Guardian' and local universities online papers. Also, in the research semi-structured face-to-face interviews with those who consider themselves being TCKs and those who do not belong to that specific group of children will be included as well.

In the research the main focus is given to students who study in HSE Moscow, especially, those who were on the exchange program in winter and summer semesters of 2019. Students who participated in the survey considering their educational achievements are both those who consider themselves to be TCKs and those who do not belong to the group. The contrast was made deliberately to compare whether it is beneficial to be a TCK when talking about education. The age group of students varies from 20 to 26 who live in Europe, Russia and the United States.

1.4 Limitations of the Study

The limitations of this research are connected with the fact that participants were only from HSE University. Notably, when analyzing academic performance of a TCK and the influence of language use one should bear in mind where a person lives: in a capital or a small town as the experiences may be different even though TCKs share same characteristics. Besides, one should understand that all the participants have different psychological features and they grew up in different cultural and linguistic environments which might have impacted their language acquisition skills along with academic performance.

Chapter 2. Literature review

This research relates to the research area that focuses on the major benefits of belonging to `Third Culture Kids'. This is a particular group of kids who both live in countries different from the one they grew up in and whose parents belong to a culture different from the one of the country. A number of studies that have been found centering on the theoretical part of belonging to a TCK group and “lost” cultural identity of these kids. However, little has been done in terms of identification of some benefits of belonging to this very group.

Unfortunately, many studies that are relevant to this research do not view the advantageous position of these children and their potential to perform better than those without mixed cultural background. The majority of studies do not center the attention of the reader on the benefits of “cultural diversity” but on challenges that a Third Culture Kid may face while growing up and studying. In addition, these studies have not given much attention to the specific impact of the language of the current place of living on Third Culture Kids and, therefore, do not highlight how changes and mixes of languages in a child's mind affect their educational achievement. To provide with ample amount of information related to the issue thorough research has been conducted based on the theoretical part of the researches and ones of the most prominent articles that are listed below.

2.1 Linguistic Environment

One of the most well-known linguists Edward Sapir (1912) in his prominent work pondered upon language structure and what influences it, language classification, how the vocabulary of the languages changes depending on the people's interest in language use and how race, cultures and language are interconnected. Sapir's idea was that a language affects the way an individual sees the world and the most groundbreaking point made is the causal link between `language' and `environment' (country and culture where a person lives). The linguist did a thorough examination of the structure of a language and provided further linguistic studies with crucial information that allowed researchers to continue analyzing linguistic structures. However, as the term of TCKs appeared decades after Sapir's work he could not elaborate on the challenges and benefits of this group. Cameron (1977) used key points of this work for further analysis to identify some major trends in `linguistic behavior' meaning the way people think including a person's beliefs, intentions and desires during interaction.

Evanoff (2005) investigated major advantages that TCKs have over children without mixed cultural background. Most importantly, the concept of integration at three different levels has been illustrated: the individual or psychological level, the interpersonal or intercultural level, and the formal level. The work provides information about the ethical norms of countries, in which situations TCKs may behave in a different way and how they develop their skills overtime. Evanoff compares two terms that one may confuse: `culture shock' and the core idea of belonging to TCKs and the difference between these notions.

One of the recent researches has been conducted by Goana Go Ying Ying (2017) who focuses more on the linguistic abilities of students who consider themselves TCKs. The author was mainly concentrating on the term of `social constructivist approach' as the main idea of the paper is the connection between the concepts of `culture' and `belonging'.

There is no certain opinion on whether being a TCK is beneficial or helps a kid to process information better and be more academically successful than those who cannot consider themselves belong to this group. Researches paid a lot of attention to self-identification of TCKs and how they behave but very few researches really elaborate on the impact that languages have on a child's ability to process information. In the article of LaPenta (2018) professor from the University of Delaware illustrated how language impairment has an impact on educational performances focusing on children who attend schools. In the article a brief description of `language impairment' is given and the author provides a reader with information on how LaPenta, who is a professional speech-language pathologist, sees the problem. It is noteworthy that workers of laboratories that examine the impact of learning a language on a child's development give the main focus on learning vocabulary, grammatical rules and phonology. Nonetheless, it proves that the knowledge of languages facilitates the processing of information and, consequently, overall academic performance as learning a language is closely connected with kid's mental abilities.

2.2 TCKs' Identity

The concept of Third Culture Kid has been thoroughly studied as it is a relatively new term. The ways of living of Third Culture Kids and putting together various factors that can affect lives of these children is fundamental while analysing TCKs academic performance. Subbotinskiy (1979) gives a great emphasis to the psychological features of a child and how personal traits are developed during their upbringing in intercultural environment. Subbotinskiy centers on the cultural impact on an infant and its influence on child's psyche. In the work author provides a reader with groundbreaking findings connected with a child living in intercultural environment highlighting key anthropological, psychological and educational points.

Pollock and Van Reken (2001) give the clear definition of the term `Third Culture Kids' by mentioning one of the most prominent experts in that question - Ruth Hill Useem who introduced the term. Intercultural researchers provided a reader with brief history of how this group of TCKs emerged. The book focuses on the experience that these children went through that should be kept in mind while interacting with them, including the shift in traditions, highly mobile style of living, beliefs, values, sense of belonging and cultural environment that surrounds them. The authors sometimes referred to this group of children as `cultural chameleons' which emphasizes the identity crisis that should be thoroughly studied. It is stated that these kids experience challenges every day that may lead to stereotyping and sometimes bullying in schools or Universities. The work is mainly connected with theory concerning the ways of living of Third Culture Kids and putting together various factors that can affect lives of these children. Importantly, the paper serves as a guide for those who cannot clearly understand who are Third Culture Kids, what problems they have to deal with and how to help them communicate with others more effectively.

Pollock and Van Reken ponder upon some major differences between following concepts: view of the reality, large network of friends, showing avoidance to make ones, being multilingual and rootless, being adaptable or feeling cultural imbalance, and experiencing identity crisis. These concepts helped to compare TCKs' and non-culturally mixed infants' styles of learning. Pollock and Reken provide a reader with general information about TCKs that is closely connected with academic performance of this group of kids and their ability to apply several languages and belong to different cultures.

Adler (2002) elaborates on notions that have recently emerged such as `intercultural', `international', `transcultural' and `multicultural' individual. He explains how different realities affect one socially and psychologically. This work is relevant to the current study as it focuses on living in an international environment along with analyzing psychological framework of this group of people where we can include TCKs.

TCKs experiencing `rootlessness' is to be analyzed when talking about their cultural and linguistic identity together with their educational achievement. Eidse & Sichel (2004) clearly demonstrate how this feeling of being lost affects a TCK's life choices and the way of living. The writers are TCKs themselves and in the book they not only illustrate real life situations of how TCKs grow up, but also how they experience being exposed to unknown cultural environments during their upbringing.

Akatova (2009) conducted a thorough research of speech production regarding communicative and ethical aspects, though focusing on the Russian language. The researcher examines information processing skills revealing some major patterns in retaining information by those who speak Russian, also focusing on the learners of the language. The paper deals with theoretical framework of the question of the linguistic and cultural impact on a person.

For many researchers the problem of confused cultural identity remains central as it makes a considerable impact on child's personality which is connected with life choices, the way a child lives and sees the world around them. Moore (2011) investigates the phenomenon of shifting identities of this group of children, the combination of several cultural backgrounds and how it affects the way one lives and whether during growing up young people get the sense of belonging to particular cultures. The writer also elaborates on some benefits of learning experiences that TCKs have. The researcher states that TCKs show high level of intercultural communication competence meaning that participants stated that their intercultural experience helped them to understand the differences between the representatives of different cultures and so not being prejudiced but tolerant and friendly.

One should take into consideration the fact that TCKs tend to be isolated as they perceive the world in a different way. Thus, isolation and possible reticence of TCKs affect their educational success that may basically lead to being passive. Lijadi and Schalkwyk (2014) pondered upon on the issue of commitment, self-isolation and the way TCKs form relationship throughout their personal development. The researchers also conducted a survey asking participants who consider themselves to be TCKs questions about their childhood, how they were taught things and their relationships with their family members, friends and professors in schools. Survey results proved that TCKs are more tolerant and `could serve as a model of multicultural education principles because of their expanded worldview'. Notably, the work is fundamental due to the fact that it raises the issue of multicultural education in order to create friendly atmosphere, which modern kindergartens, schools and universities often lack so that children would not feel isolated but actually embrace their cultural diversity and be academically successful.

As people got an opportunity to travel and see the world more often they get exposed to experience new cultural environments which these travelers actually enjoy. Thus, such as being a `global nomad', also, has to be examined in order to compare the similar experiences of TCKs and those who call themselves `global nomads'. Richards (2015) assures that the term `global nomad' stems from the changing views on mobility and the spreading of `youth travel'. The author highlights that it is `communication technology' that basically changed the situation of youth traveling as social relations became widespread and there is growing trend of being highly mobile. In his article Richards particularly focuses on the phenomenon of `nomadism' also identifying and examining three major travel styles that the representative of `youth nomads' share. This piece of information about youth traveling and that it spreads extremely fast is closely connected with TCKs experience, in particular, the reader can observe the issue from different perspective - of those who do not belong to the group but still get exposed to new cultural experiences as TCKs do. The writer in his other work related to the analysis of the way `global nomads' live and interact with others he provided with simple definition of the term connecting it with real nomads who traveled from country to country stating that `global nomads', who are practically young people, do the same (Richards & Wilson, 2004). Thus, some major tendencies may come out and further examined by contrasting behavior of TCKs and those who call themselves `global nomads'.

She-Ing Wang (2015) covers the same issue mainly focusing on the identity and the sense of belonging of TCKs which affects their educational achievement, emphasizing educational and social experiences that these children may have to deal with on a daily basis. Wortham (2006) also provides necessary data about students during their studying. The author illustrates how identification of students and their academic performance become interdependent.

Faye (2016) was concerned about the problem of TCKs' identities and stated that one's identity becomes a choice and usually it is hard to live and make life choices when people do not know who they are. Faye is a TCK herself: her mother is from Finland and her father is from Senegal, however, her `home country' is the UK. She elaborates on the concept of `home' assuring that this concept is closely connected with one's `emotional attachment' to the place and that it deals with being comfortable wherever an individual is. This is closely connected with a child's conduct and educational performance: if a child does not have the sense of belonging they are far more likely to not have friends and experience depression. According to Faye choosing one's own identity may be a way out that can facilitate personal growth.

The question of cultural identity of a child arises not only during the upbringing of a child but the big emphasis is given to the `identity' that a kid develops unconsciously while interacting with other kids. This serious matter was thoroughly examined by Rustine (2018) who is also TCKs herself and who stated that developing an identity of a Third Culture Kid should be given more attention. Most importantly, the writer focuses on how the identity of this group of kids influences their educational experiences giving considerable emphasis to the individual and potential recognition. As the previous researcher Rustine was conducting multiple interviews with students who were studying outside of their home countries and revealed that TCKs' relationships with those who shared similar traits and features helped participants to discover their identity. Also, Rustine gave a clear description of the word `home' and what it meant to the participants as she considered it to be vital for them to ponder upon during the interview.

2.3 Cognitive Flexibility

Cognitive skills of a child should be thoroughly analyzed as it plays a key role during development years (Jacues & Zelazo, 2005). Authors prove that linguistic abilities and cognitive flexibility are closely connected and provide information of how it can affect a child's educational experiences. Notably, according to the article when a child is not using languages they know their reading, writing skills and then oral speech and the overall understanding of a particular language deteriorate.

Glozman (2009) ponders upon the problems of language acquisition by bilingual children and its impact on their educational achievement and the way they socialize. The author explains that if a child acquires two or more languages simultaneously there will be no problem in using these languages and so communicate with others and comprehend information. As the writer focuses on neuropsychology she states that an infant's cognitive flexibility could be easily trained to absorb new information so a child would not see any obstacle while communicating in various languages if taught properly. Glozman assures that there should be a clear distinction between the use of languages in school, kindergarten and while being at home.

Glozman states that further misunderstandings of a material in school and then miscommunication with peers stems from incomplete acquisition in bilingualism which is connected with the way they have been taught languages by their parents or teachers. According to the author the problem is not within a child, their way of perceiving the world and challenges that they face while communicating with others but with the way a language was taught. Glozman provides a reader with an example of a TCK who lives in Germany. Her parents used only the Russian language when communicating with each other, though her father was German and her mother was Russian. However, with their daughter they were talking only in German but still talking in Russian with each other. This girl is really communicative and has no problem in expressing herself in both languages and so she shows good academic performance in school. It was found out that there is a positive influence of knowing two or more languages on cognitive skills of a child which include good memory, sustained attention and logic that help a child in their educational achievements.

2.4 Educational trajectories

Street (1993) stresses that the way different societies and cultures view literacy is fundamental when dealing with acquiring new skills and so information processing. The author investigates the notion of `literacy' as unique skill and he explains why it should be taken into consideration during one's studying.

One research that provides information concerning the influence of the knowledge of more than two languages on a person's educational achievement was done by Holland and Cole (1995). The researchers assure that `school's recognition of mediation' is vital for student's mental and emotional activity. Holland and Cole gave a great emphasis on the different approaches that could be implemented in schools in order to help with TCKs students' learning experiences and be academically successful.

In order to understand how multicultural schools would work in reality Brisk (1996) provided information about such multicultural high school that was opened by a group of teachers in Boston and she analyzes its main purposes. The author gives an emphasis on bilingual education and pinpoints that this program aims to facilitate the development of positive attitude towards students' native languages and their cultures. In addition Brisk provides necessary data for teachers and parents on how to be culturally aware, show high levels of intercultural competence and help TCKs to achieve their educational goals.

Van Manen (1997) provides a reader with different educational methods that can be offered to those who study and different individual approaches that would help one with their educational achievements. Most importantly, Van Manen illustrates the impact of language learning on various fields of studying analyzing some pedagogical experiences.

Schooling processes are to examine as well when it comes to educational trajectories and strategies. Vey often it is up to teachers to meet academic needs of a child who has migrated with their family members (Freeman, Freeman & Mercuri, 2001). In the article writers elaborate on how a teacher can create friendly and welcoming atmosphere for a bilingual child to show high levels of academic performance.

Grace Kao (2004) focuses on the issue of some major differences between children with mixed cultural background yet centering on the idea that these kids behave differently compared with those with non-immigrant parents. The research illustrated how children who have recently moved from their home country tend to outperform their peers with native-born parents. The next important point made and thoroughly examined in the study is the influence of the languages that TCKs have been taught by their international families. The results of the study predominantly highlight the link between the impacts of parents' cultural background on a child's cultural development regarding the vulnerability of the way a kid perceives the world.

It is essential to analyze TCKs' experiences and behavioral patterns in theory but also it is fundamental to apply the theory and conduct research based on case studies. Bartlett (2007) provided with data examining `educational trajectories' of these group of children and obstacles that they overcome during their studying experience. She elaborates on social identification of newcomers of the US school mainly focusing on the experience of a bilingual girl studying there. The writer sheds a light on the experience of a real child and her viewpoint on girl's educational trajectory and attitudes of some school workers. Also, the design of classroom activities is vital in this case as it deals with learner's participation and their will to make progress (Rymes & Pash).

Espinetti (2011) gives greater emphasis on TCKs' experience in education, precisely, student-teacher relationships, acculturation process in classrooms, how migration has an impact on a child's educational and social experiences. As the mother to a Third Culture Kid herself, Espinetti succeeded at providing data about experience of Third Culture Kids, the way teachers should help an infant to adjust better and not to feel left out and lost. The author argues that recently little attention has been paid to the difficulties of TCKs challenges during interaction with fellow students and teachers or professors and the problems of sense of belonging which TCK may experience due to both teachers' and parents' inability to find a particular way to interact with infants so that they feel content and confident.

Engelbrecht (2013) highlights the relation between education and a child's development assuring that education `revolves around human maturation' and the change of norms and principles within TCKs while growing up. Notably, Engelbrecht was mainly aiming to identify fundamental needs of Third Culture Kids while studying elaborating on identity loss, having two places as home and having unique experience of living abroad. In the work the researcher revealed some educational needs: how teachers and parents can support TCKs and actually change educational paradigm, to develop the ability to respond to challenges, to provide educational opportunities for TCKs, to be aware of culture diversity. Engelbrecht, also gives relevant examples on how TCKs can thrive while studying and that it all connected with educational systems that should be changed in order to meet the needs of international students.

Mayberry (2016) truly believes that a TCKs' experience is very unique. The writer reveals that Third Culture Kids have both positive and negative outcomes and she assures that families and teachers should support them whenever they can. She elaborates on TCKs abilities: being more flexible, open-minded, better coping with changing situations. Also, she highlights some major backdrops of being a TCK but according to Mayberry they can be changed to the beneficial ones with the help of adults.

Espada-Campos (2018) investigates college engagement of Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs) and the way that intercultural upbringing affects overall involvements of an undergraduate. The author analyzes needs of TCKs in Higher Education, how they behave during classes, common risks that they may face. Most importantly, when carrying out interviews, Espada-Campos was the first researcher so far who distinguished participants' sense of belonging using concepts of `passport' and `cultural' affiliations. Her work provides a reader with crucial information about participants' international upbringing, communication with others concerning college choice, uneven development, challenges at home and investment in terms of constant movement and relationships with peers. Together with Campos the same problem was investigated by Study International Staff (2019) that run the `Study International' which is a popular online newspaper that provides a reader with different topics connected with international life and education. According to the article everything revolves around the international upbringing of a child and parents should pay attention to that.

Caroll (2019) ponders upon an issue of how TCKs make life choices and how it differs from choices of children with non-mixed cultural background. Importantly, Caroll's research not only centres on how the concept of TCKs emerged, psychological and sociological factors that influence a child, but also several groundbreaking findings concerning educational experiences (school, University and career choice) and effects on personal identity of an infant.

2.5 Adult Third Culture Kids

When talking about TCKs' experiences one may wonder how those experiences affect these children later in life and how these kids behave when they are older. Smith (1996) gives a detailed insight into the life of an Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK) carrying out a survey with ATCKs and examining some major trends. Notably, Smith's survey results reveal that because of their wish to study and learn and `desire for independence and flexibility' they are more successful at their workplace which is directly linked to their high educational achievements. However, the author highlights that participants were changing colleges, universities or schools during their studies more than two times which may indicate the difficulty of fitting in.

Lang (2002) was analyzing the same issue and she came into conclusion that the future is TCKs' and people should be more like them: being open and show high level of intercultural competency. Navarrette (2010) highlights that in the situation of globalization and people constantly moving to other countries and changing their residencies to grow up as TCK is beneficial and it should be viewed positively.

Stokke (2013) truly believes that TCKs can be considered to be global leaders as they posses all the necessary qualities that global leaders do. In the research the writer concentrates on the term `global environment' and how Adult Third Culture Kids can improve businesses, especially international ones, and become international leaders. Strokke assures that their contribution to the society is fundamental due to the fact that they posses number of qualities that are important nowadays as they are related to being culturally aware, tolerant and understanding. The contribution of this work is essential as the researcher elaborates on the impact of childhood experiences of TCKs on their later life and how they actually can become global leaders because of these experiences.

Chapter 3. Methods

In the first chapter I provided with the design of the current work. In methodology section it was stated that I will employ discursive analysis and qualitative analysis which encompasses semi-structured face-to-face interviews and a questionnaire. As in my research the great emphasis is given to the impact of knowing more than two languages on a TCKs educational experiences I analyzed relevant data including statistics, review of articles of popular scientific papers related to this topic . Besides, in order to identify what kind of behaviors Third Culture Kids share when talking about academic performance a thorough examination of the survey was conducted.

3.1 Participants

As it was explained in the first chapter the participants of the survey were students of HSE University in Moscow who still study in the university or have been on the exchange program in 2019 winter and summer semesters. The age group of these students varied from 20 till 26. It should be mentioned that the participants of the survey were people from Moldova, France, Germany, Romania, the Russian Federation, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the USA. Importantly, 15 respondents out of all 25 people who wanted to participate are TCKs or better called ATCKs. However, not a lot of students who belong to this group understand who is TCK and that they actually are TCKs.

The reason why I chose this very group of students is that during winter and summer semesters of 2019 I noticed how good exchange students were during classes, how they did not really face any challenges while studying in HSE Moscow, only despite the `culture shock' that they had experienced while living in Russia for a semester. However, I noticed that, obviously, exchange students did not behave in the same way and they shared cultural backgrounds that differed from one another, though they shared one common trait - they knew more than two languages. In addition, a lot of these students were TCKs without them really understanding that as some of them had no idea of what it is like to be a Third Culture Kid. As stated in the first chapter the family members of these students once had to move abroad taking their kids with them which is an indicator that these students were exposed to a new cultural environment if not talking about many.

The participants of the survey are TCKs and those who do not belong to the group and also those who do not know they were TCKs. These groups were selected deliberately in order not only to investigate major obstacles that TCKs face while studying but also to compare their educational experiences with those who do not have mixed cultural background. The comparison was done in order to shed a light on how students who know more than two languages are actually different in the case of processing information and various tasks while studying; even though, they share similar ability - understanding languages in intercultural environment. It is obvious that learning a language as the second one by yourself or with a professor is not the same as being taught a language by one's family members. The crucial point is that in the first case a child may not practice the language on a daily basis if none of their family members knows it. On the other hand, in the second situation a child is `surrounded' by the language and a culture that this language belongs to. Here the key verb is `surrounded' as children's cognitive abilities while growing up and learning a language in theory are easily trained and flexible. This cognitive flexibility facilitates a child's ability to obtain, keep, retain and use information received.

Taking into consideration all these peculiarities I designed my survey in a way that both groups can provide irrefragable answers. The survey is not a complicated one and consists of two main parts. The first part focuses on the personal information and the second one aims to obtain valuable data related to the academic performances.

3.2 The Design of the Questionnaire

The first part of the questionnaire deals with basic information about the person such as: the current place of living, the number of languages known and used and questions related to the reason why a student went abroad. Importantly, participants were asked to elaborate on the term of being a `Third Culture Kid' which was done to reveal whether participants know about the life of a TCK. It is important that in the second chapter I provided with researches which pondered upon the issue of the `lost identity' that many TCKs share, thus, in the first section of the survey participants were also asked to elaborate on their identity, values, some major principles and to think whether there is more than one culture within them.

The purpose of answering the questions in the first part of the questionnaire is to make a participant think of their past experiences and to recall in what cultural environment they grew up and who they are concerning their culture and so languages that they used or still using. By the time students complete the first section of the survey they already have some information about themselves in their minds - information about TCKs that they have never thought of. This way it leads to the second part of the survey which is, unlike the main goal of the first section, connected with a participant's educational success.

In the second section a student is offered to choose what best describes them by reflecting on their studying experience. Here students are to speculate on how they process information, whether they do tasks faster than others and to think whether their mixed cultural background helps them while studying as they have an ability to deal with a lot of information. All the questions that were in the survey are going to be put in Appendix A and Appendix B of this work.

3.3 Analysis of the Answers

First section

As stated earlier in this chapter the participants were mainly from Europe, Russia and the USA. There are four students from Italy, three from Germany, one from Moldova and one from Romania, two from France, eight from Russia, two from Spain, one from the USA and one from the Netherlands. The overall number of students who participated in the survey reached 25 people. It should be noted that this number of participants should be considered as the limitation of the research and also the fact that I took students of one University.

One of the first questions of the survey that students had to answer was about the number of languages that they speak. The data can be found in the Appendix B in the end of the work. This question clearly shows that approximately 80% of all the participants know and use more than three languages, however, around 20% of students opted for knowing only two languages. Notably, students who chose that they know only two languages are from small towns in France, Italy and Russia where it is not considered to be culturally aware along with being internationally competent. culture business office

In the first chapter I provided a reader with reasons of how some children were to become TCKs. Some primary reasons are: one of the family members had to move abroad for better job prospects, parents of a kid were immigrants, and that legal guardians of an infant had to move seeking better life. That is why the purpose of the next question in a survey was to identify the main reason of changing the place of a residence. Turns out that almost 50% of all respondents chose the option stating that one of the major reasons was to travel and see the world. The percentage of those who chose that they were studying abroad as why they left their home country reached 36%. The number of students who chose the first option as the key factor of migrating because of their legal guardians had to move for better life or job was approximately 12%. However, only one person did not have a chance to travel and go abroad. It is vital to acknowledge one fact that all people participating were my former groupmates and friends and as I was talking with them about their experiences most of them can be considered to be Third Culture Kids. However, most of them are either not familiar with this term or they have no idea that they are TCK as they have not talked with anyone about it in depth.