Intercultural Scenario
As to the world become more and more globalized, culture difference gradually draws people's attention especially when conflict appears during the communication and even ruins the business between counterparts. Therefore, we need to aware of such differences, and try to make a balance point to resolve the conflicts. By describing the following intercultural scenario, you may find such culture difference is quite interesting.
Last summer, taking a finance-related module, I surprisingly found that the majority of students were Canadians, and only 3 Chinese students including me. Because one of assessments consisted 15% of class participation, our professor preferred to ask bunch of questions during the class. However, gradually he found that ,as each time he posed a question, none of the Chinese would raise their hands and volunteer for an answer, even if they had the answer in the mind.,. Typically, only the Canadians gave the answers and enjoyed participating in the class discussion. And one day, the professor called one of us individually and asked why we were not participating in the discussions. Then, that student told him because he was lack of confidence and afraid to give the wrong answer in which he would lose face in the classroom. The professor got very surprised why we had such feeling because He originally attributed our passiveness was due to lack of interests in this subject. Eventually, he conducted a meeting with three of us to discuss this issue. After the deep communication among us, we found that our behaviors were, to some extent, due to Chinese high-context culture which people preferred implicit expression of their ideas, whereas, the westerners, like our professor, under their low-context culture, favored of explicit expression, and therefore, he projected us before he was aware of this culture difference.
In the light of above example, we know that effective communication plays a key role to find out culture- difference related issue. Therefore, whenever the conversation involves intercultural communication, we should be aware of culture differences, understand them and reach the balance point to resolve them through effective communication.
For the sentences, "he was lack of confidence" can be written as "he lacked confidence" and "lack of interests" can be written as "lack of interest".
回复删除"Last summer, taking a finance-related module, I surprisingly found" can be written as "Last summer, while taking a finance-related module, I was surprised to find".
"and only 3 Chinese students" can be written as "and there were only..."
I think this problem is rather prevalent in Singaporean classroom settings. We are unsure of our answers, hence we don't want to provide the wrong answer in fear of being humiliated.
Of course, there are also some individuals who don't give two hoots to answering the teacher's question. >.<
in the Singaporean classroom setting as well*
回复删除In portraying your experience, it does seem that the Chinese culture is responsible for us not being participative in class. And it is indeed a clear difference in how we behave as compared to the westerners in the classroom setting. However, i fear that such behaviour might be detrimental to us when we enter the workforce.Being in a globalised world, we might be at the losing end if we cant verbalise our thoughts and stand forth to express our views.
回复删除Hence i would wish to highlight the point that even though the professor might recognise that Chinese tend not to speak up due to cultural reasons, however, it is important to adapt to the new environment in order to move ahead or along with the natives. Evaluating intercultural scenario is enlightening and at the same time beneficial, since lessons can be drawn and learn from it.
Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Hi Isabel,
回复删除I was wondering so how id your professor solve the problem in the end? Did you all end up participating in future class discussions?
Like what Ming Yan and Reynold had said, this is always seen in Nus where students refused to speak up even when they had a question in mind. However i think that Arts people tend to speak up more during lessons as compared to Science students. Within the college, there was sort of a different culture in different faculties too. I once heard a discussion between two students at a bus stop and they were discussing this. Saying Science people tends to be more introverted and Arts people are more extroverted. Well I think it was a typical generalization. Perhaps, it was the kind of marking scheme in these tutorial settings which lead to students not willing to speak up.
Like what Reynold said, I think speaking up is very important too especially when we go out to work next time. Hence I think we should change this kind of culture, and instead try to open up our mind and speak up.