Social support and intercultural sensitivity among learners of Chinese as a foreign language in Malaysia

Abstract

Intercultural sensitivity is an affective and interactional orientation towards cultural difference. Although social support has been widely studied in relation to international students’ adjustment, its association with intercultural sensitivity remains underexplored among locally embedded foreign language learners. This study described social support and intercultural sensitivity and tested whether three dimensions of social support were positively associated with intercultural sensitivity after controlling for demographic characteristics. A cross-sectional survey was completed by 380 nonChinese Malaysian students enrolled in elective Chinese courses at five public universities. Participants were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling. Social support and intercultural sensitivity were assessed using the Social Support Rating Scale and Intercultural Sensitivity Scale. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations provided preliminary results. Hierarchical multiple regression entered age, gender, and educational background in the first block and subjective support, objective support, and support utilisation in the second. The support dimensions explained an additional 16.7% of the variance beyond the demographic variables, yielding a full-model R² of .238. Subjective support (β = .22), objective support (β = .20), and support utilisation (β = .19) each showed a significant positive adjusted association with intercultural sensitivity. The findings indicate that social support and its three dimensions are related to intercultural sensitivity and extend social-support research beyond internationally mobile populations to local CFL learners in a multicultural society.