Blog Post #5: Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Intercultural Scenario:

During my third year undergraduate in NUS, I was given the opportunity to participate in the Student Exchange Program (SEP) to University of Arizona in United States. This experience allowed me to immerse in different cultural environment where I had the chance to observe contrasting behaviors between Asian and American students in classes and their different living habits.

Most Americans in Arizona relied more on verbal communication, less on circumstances and non-verbal cues to convey messages. Thus, they were usually direct, precise and explicit in their communication. For instance, lectures in the university was usually more interactive and informative where American students were proactive in posing questions to clear their doubt at the same time the answers to these questions also benefited other students as well. However, cohabiting with them could be problematic sometimes as they might lack tolerant towards other tenant’s habits and their strong sense of individualism created new problems to the community in the house. For example, they would complain how the other Asian roommates call their family during night time (which they had to call usually around 10pm due to time difference) disrupted their studies or sleeps yet they love to bring up their music volume and sing along loudly during the day, totally oblivious towards other roommates having their mid term exam around the corner.

In contrast, most Asian students (Chinese and Singaporeans) relied less on verbal communication and more on nonverbal cues and implicit information, shared by their own group in the communication, to convey messages. As a result, they can appear indirect in their verbal communication. For instance, Asians students in the university were much more reserved or self conscious and they would generally copy notes quietly during lecture. Even if they had any opinions, they would usually keep it to themselves or within their cliques. During a biochemistry class, a few Asian students gathered after a biochemistry lecture, commenting the way the American professor was giving that lecture. They were complaining how fast the lecturer spoke and they couldn’t catch the words. If they had approached the professor, they could work out a win-win situation with the professor. On the other hand, they were excellent roommate as they possess a strong sense of “Communitarianism”; their shared values on the importance of living as a family, to share what they have and accept/ tolerate different people’s habits.

What I learnt from this scenario:

I remembered Brad shared the concept of culture in class. He mentioned that the expressions of culture which could be seen like behaviour, clothing and food while those that were intrinsic were the underlying attitudes, beliefs, values, and meanings.

I believe to achieve effective communication across cultures, it is important to understand the underlying factors responsible for those differences on top of recognizing different behaviours express by people from different culture

Although, I did not had the same level of interaction with fellow Asians or Americans, I feel that it is important to treat everyone equally and humbly to prevent prejudice and to learn how different culture sees life in different perspective. Hence, the first step I took towards more effective intercultural communication was to increase my awareness of those crucial underlying factors starting firstly with my own cultures before I could continue to explore different cultural perspective towards values.

It is only with a better understanding of these factors that I can see things in the eyes of other people, to empathize with them, before I can communicate more clearly and build more meaningful relationships I encounter.