4. Meals

Different eating habits can also cause misunderstanding. A group of British students once complained that being vegetarians they were only given food made of cabbages by their Russian landlady. The matter is that the landlady had never learned to cook vegetarian food, and that was, and still is, very typical of the Russian women. You can hear similar complaints from the Russian students not used to corn flakes for breakfast. Anyway, it is not a tragedy to have to obey certain restrictions for a short time as an inevitable price one has to pay for getting familiar with another culture. Discussing national cuisine and various personal tastes can be made a fascinating activity.

5. Attitude to time

Students are familiarised with different attitudes to time specific for different cultures and told that representatives of Anglo-Saxon culture are known for their punctuality. Its practical consequences are numerous: invitations should be issued in advance, guests are supposed to arrive within a given period of time, students should observe deadlines for homework, class arrival and departure, etc.

At the same time, other cultures may differ greatly in this respect. The Japanese tend to arrive 5 to 10 minutes earlier, Latin Americans can often be late without intending to be impolite, Arabs approach time in connection with adherence to ritual forms of greeting and hospitality which presents problems in business negotiations if their partners prefer a faster pace. The typically Russian habit to be always late, to keep people waiting, to forget about their appointments or promises may cost them their careers, especially if they intend to study or work internationally.

The students are also told about minor incompatibilities of the national concepts of time, such as the chronological difference between the English phrase "We are meeting at nine" and its Russian equivalent. In English it almost always means: "At nine sharp we all must be here and ready to start", while in Russian it often means: "We are starting to meet at nine, with ten to fifteen minutes granted to those who have not managed to come by nine". There are a lot of instances when this little peculiarity caused a clash of expectations and mutual dissatisfaction.

6. Academic life

Russian students going to study in the UK ought to be familiarised with the differences between the two systems of education. The Orientation Course contains an introductory seminar on the British system of higher education, organised as a combination of a mini-lecture given by the instructor and brief talks on the main aspects of comparison prepared by the students. The first aspect of comparison is the greater flexibility of the academic programmes in the British universities than in the Russian ones, in the way that the British students have more freedom in choosing among the courses. Another significant aspect is the incompatibility of the graduate degrees in Russia and the UK mainly because of the different length of studies. The third aspect of comparison to talk about is the lack of academic writing in Russian universities due to the traditionally oral examinations.