Cultural Miscommunication -TESOL 103 - Week 05 - 16 October 2021

 Cultural Miscommunication

  Body and facial expressions may mean different things for different cultures!

Sometimes it is difficult to understand what people are really trying to say, if we don't understand their culture and traditions. We must pay attention and try to find out a little about their culture or we may think they are being rude or unkind with us, when it is the opposite, they are kind and we are being rude with them. So, I think we should always give them the benefit of the doubt when talking to someone from another country or even from another part of the same country.

Be aware of potential misunderstandings. People's gestures may not mean the same things. Sometimes we take peoples gestures as an insult, but they're not an insult.

It is interesting how some things are very different in other cultures:

 If you complement a Japanese, he or she will say something negative about themselves, they don't like being in the spot, they believe that everyone should work together and no one should be put above others. They are a group oriented culture. They say: 

"The nail that sticks up get hammered down". 

There are many things that can bring misunderstanding between people from different places or cultures: facial expressions, gestures, traditions, the way you talk, the way you behave on the table, interruptions when talking to someone, tardiness, the way you conduct your work or treat other people, and list goes on. 

In my hometown It is very common for people to visit each other without announcing first, when I came to live in where I live now, I couldn't understand why nobody would visit me, I thought that they just didn't like me. Only years later, someone from another place told me that this is the something cultural from here. I suffered because I couldn't understand.

Knowing that people around the world have so many cultural differences between them, will help us to be better prepared to teach our foreign students.