Erasmus programme allows for the EU level student mobility which has been supported already for 20 years starting in 1987 (Rivza, 2007). The programme is beneficial in providing higher education students to acquire new knowledge and experience in an international environment. At the same time, however, it poses the challenge of how to adapt to a different culture. This study investigates the experience of Turkish ELT students of Erasmus programme with specific reference to how they manage to culturally adapt both at macro and micro level. At macro level, the study looks into how the students function as individuals new to the foreign community and at micro level, how they immerse themselves within the ELT community. The research reported in this study benefited from the recent theories of cultural adaptation in examining the international experience of Erasmus students. The early conceptualization of the experience of international students was strongly related to medical models of sojourner adjustment (Ward, Bochner, and Furnham, 2001:36). However, by the 1980s, the experience of international students had been viewed differently “as a learning experience rather than a medical nuisance” (Yuefang, Jindal-Snape, Topping, and Todman, 2008:64). A more contemporary perspective to such experience has been encompassed in three theories, considering the different components of response- affect, behaviour and cognition (ABC)- when people are exposed to a new culture (Bochner 2003; Yuefang, 2008). These theories are culture learning (Furnham and Bochner, 1986), stress and coping (Lazarus and Folkman 1984), and social identification (Phinney, 1990).

For triangulation purposes, data for the study were obtained from Socio-cultural Adaptation Scale by Ward and Kennedy (1999), the reports of former Erasmus students, and interviews with those students. In order to reflect student experiences from different parts of Europe to the study, out of totally 86 students who have participated in the Erasmus mobility so far, fifty were selected by purposeful random sampling to respond to Socio-cultural Adaptation Scale and the repots of the same students were analyzed. Among those students, ten were invited to the interviews, upon the completion of scales.

The research findings put light on how students viewed the experience, themselves at macro and micro level as ELT students and the strategies they employed to cope with the adaptation difficulties. The study calls for an urgent need for more systematic guidance before and during the mobility process.