The international education industry has become the third largest export earner for Australia. The number of full-fee paying international students increased by 19% in 2007; Chinese students accounted for 22%, which places them first in the list of Major Source Countries of overseas students in Australia.

Culture shock is already a familiar concept for immigrants. They have always had to deal with it. However, the majority of Chinese students coming to Australia to study struggle with a further aspect of this problem: learning shock.

"I feel it is really difficult to get used to the learning style here," said Qun Gao, who is studying at the University of Sydney, looking depressed.

"Even though I was mentally prepared before I came here, I was still shocked with the totally different pedagogical system," she said. "You can ask questions at any time during the seminar and the lecturer normally wouldn't get angry with your interruption. On the contrary, they always explain your enquiry with patience." 

"However, in China, students normally don't ask questions until class is over. If you interrupt the lecturer, it looks very impolite. It not only influences the lecturer's train of thought, but other students' as well." She looks puzzled.

It is true that learning shock has already become one of the intractable issues for some international students. It makes them depressed about their study, and some of them even avoid going to classes.

As Australia is one of the most popular country choices for international students, the staff of the Australian colleges and universities have to pay attention to this phenomenon if they intend to keep exploiting overseas students as a major revenue source.

According to the statistics from the Australian Education International (AEI), the international education industry has become the third largest export earner for Australia. The number of full-fee paying international students in Australia increased by 19% in 2007 compared with a previous year. Chinese students accounted for 22%, which places them first in the list of Major Source Countries of overseas students.

While chatting at a business function recently, my colleagues and I were joined by a transport expert fresh back from a fact-finding mission in Asia. That's where the rest of us had spent much of our professional lives, so conversation quickly turned to useful things we had observed there that could be adopted in Australia.

Raised first was the helpful Japanese custom on railways across the country - whether subways, suburban or long-distance trains - of marking each station's name board with not only the name of the station you've just arrived at but underneath it, the name of the one preceding and the one following. That's handy for anyone on an unfamiliar line, whether Japanese or foreign, and encourages passengers to move to the door in advance of the train stopping where you're going to get off. It's a simple and logical triangulation that not only increases efficiency but also makes some passengers a little more relaxed that they might otherwise be.

The transport expert had visited Japan but hadn't noticed this. He'd had a short trip on the Bullet Train but used the time to catch up on sleep.

We pushed the point but it went right over his head.

‘I can't see how this is relevant to Australia,' he said, with an air of petulance.

‘Because it's so damn functional,' one of my colleagues, Simon, persisted.

‘Maybe so,' the expert replied, ‘but that doesn't mean we should change all of our station signs here.'