Cultural Miscommunication

 

October 14, 2020 Week 5 Response to Cultural Miscommunication

Joke of the day: “Mrs. Green lived in two story house together with an elderly widow. After not hearing from her for a few days, she got a bit nervous. “John”, she called to her son “do me a favor and go find out how old Mrs. Robinson is.” So six year old John went down the stairs and knocked on Mrs. Robinson’s door. “So how is she?” asked Mrs. Green when John came back up. “How is she?” repeated John “I’ve never seen her so mad in my life, she said it’s none of your business how old she is.”

Miscommunication often happens even in people who speak the same language, add in learned behaviors of another culture and a lot of culture misunderstandings can occur.  This week in our BYU Idaho class with Professor Ivers’ video talked a lot about different miscommunications that happen because of culture.  In Latin America they have come thing called, “Pasar um buen momento” or having a pleasant time speaking.  It means the people on Latin America enjoy having a good conversation with someone more than accomplishing the task at hand.  In Japan and other Asian countries, it’s important for the people to stay part of the group and not be singled out.  He used the example of a Chinese boy living in America with his parents and attending a local school.  The teacher is so impress with his work that she wants to spot light his abilities by making him ‘Star Student’.  The Chinese boy is appalled by this idea and begins to cry.  In his culture you don’t do things that would make you stand out from one another.  The phrase Professor Ivers used was, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”  An American teacher would have no idea how offensive it was for the Chinese child to be spotlighted.  It’s a very foreign idea for us. We try to make our individualism stand out.

https://video.byui.edu/media/04+Cultural+Miscommunication/0_3aaa6xxh

I also found other culture miscommunications interesting.  In Germany, the office workers keep their doors closed to be orderly. This is thought of as unfriendly by people from other countries.  In Albania, a nod of the head means, ‘no’ and a shake of the head back and forth means ‘yes’.  This is totally backwards from what I’ve grown up with and would be very confusing to talk to this person.  In America, we don’t like to have silence when we are speaking, so we keep talking.  In other countries, they have silences in conversations to contemplate.  A lot of miscommunications can happen just because of not understanding how people talk in their own culture.

I thought there was a lot of generalization of people in the video and I know that we shouldn’t assume just because they are from a certain country they all act that way.  Even in the U.S., we have different miscommunications happen among ourselves. Misunderstandings and being offend can happen when talking to anyone. Being slow to take offense and quick to listen to understand instead of thinking of a response can help us communicate better.

In the ESL class, I believe it will be helpful to get to know the students individually and seek to understand their way of talking.  I have a student from Miramar who says, “ah, ah, ah” all the time.  I first thought she wanted to interrupt and say something but then I realized she is listening closely and understanding what is being said.  Her “ah, ah, ah” was actually a “yes, yes, yes”.  We have many students from Miramar in the class; she is the only one who does this.    I’m glad I never embarrassed her by pointing it out. As a teacher, I hope I will listen closely and watch to see how the individual student is learning and if they are acting uncomfortable or embarrassed by something.  This will give me clues of how to enhance their learning.  Miscommunications will happen but they can also be solved by open communications.