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Segregated seating in the lecture hall

I notice that ‘social interactions with fellow international students’ was shown to have the least benefit on clinical communication skills, yet most of the time, based on personal experience and published studies, international medical students tend to do just that. At my medical school international medical students tend to stick together, and are reluctant to mix with the rest of the class, the effect of which is most obvious when teaching takes place in lecture halls: a line of international medical students sit together, segregated from the local medical students. This has a twofold impact: first, they miss out on the chat that local medical students usually have in between lectures about after-class plans and activities (hence missing the chance to socialise); and second, once thrown out of this comfort zone (in clinical seminars or tutorials where students are randomly allocated), they will tend to shy away from participating, as these represent rare occasions in which they ‘have’ to interact with the local students.