Since nuts are very popular among Indians, our booth gave away various kinds of nuts mixed together in paper cones and we did not provide any spoons to eat them with as we assumed that it was normal for everyone to eat snacks with bare hands. However, we realized later that not everyone thought the same. Surprisingly, many international students gave us puzzled looks and asked us how we eat them. Some even started licking the nuts as it was packed in a way that resembled an ice-cream cone!
It was then that we realized that different cultures have distinctly different characteristics and we cannot take anything for granted. We had seemingly adopted a high- context culture subconsciously and it did not coincide with everyone else’s there. In order to avoid such situations, we have to be more accommodating when interacting with other cultures as it is extremely important to expand our cultural awareness and enrich our intercultural relationships. This is in order to preserve mutual respect and minimize communication breakdown across different cultures.
Hi Ish,
ReplyDeleteAfter looking through your post on the observations, I gained quite a number of new information that I did not know about in the past such as nuts are very popular among the Indians. In addition, the usage of examples from NUS setting let students like me know more about events that happen in the school. Moreover, by using words like myriad to replace the common word of countless, limitless shows the readers your vocabulary and helps reduce the repetitive of common words that is used by incalculable blogs. Nevertheless, I believe that this post can be further improved by providing a case study on the observation of interpersonal communication as required by the question. Furthermore, you can use a picture that is more relevant to your observation to illustrate your observation. Perhaps you could use a photo taken during the orientation for the international exchange students.
Jonathan
Hi Ish,
ReplyDeleteI think your blog post provided quite a good explanation of what you understand by culture and fundamental of effective communications by using your recent experience. By using an example that turned out to have an unexpected and humorous result, I think that this will allow us to understand your point better. This example shows that we are living in a couture that is higher –context and we expect others to be exactly like us. You could give the learning points from this experience that relates to what we have learnt about effective communications and explain what you could do to avoid these embarrassing experiences in the future.
Regards,
Zhi Hong
Hi Ish,
ReplyDeleteYour post was very interesting and got me totally involved into it. The part on intercultural communication was very well put forward with a very amusing example. Maybe something could be said about interpersonal communication too. You conveyed your thoughts about intercultural communication very well. What I think I missed out in my post was solutions to solve such misunderstandings. I think that this is essential to make the blog post complete.
Your post was very well written and I really enjoyed reading it. :)
Manjula
Nice article!!! Thanks for sharing such useful information with us. Communication Skills Training program
ReplyDelete