Culture Miscommunication
by Aranza Garza
According to the Oxford Languages, Misunderstanding means "a failure to understand something correctly," and Miscommunication means "failure to communicate adequately." We, as humans, can have a lot of misunderstandings and miscommunications. When we speak or when we do something, and because of the diversity of this world, is it normal to have cultural miscommunications.
In the video Cross-Cultural Communication, we can understand a little better how these differences can happen. The video gives us examples of how business is different in Japan and the United States, or how body gestures can be different in each country, and even in their own country (United States) the way people talk depending on where they live, maybe the cause of miscommunication in the attitude or the context of the words. I live in Mexico, where these differences happen a lot between states and even in people from your own family.
Even though these differences can be little or big ones, they can affect our relationships with certain people or the way we view them. In the teaching world of TESOL and ESL classes, this misunderstanding (as we mentioned earlier) can affect the relationship between students and teachers, and because these ESL classes mostly have a diverse group of students, the cultural differences can be a problem to understand.
One example was given to us, by the video mention previously (Cross-cultural Communication), where the professor shares an experience from his wife regarding an exchange student from China. The student was a very capable and intelligent kid, and therefore the teachers decided to name him "student of the week," but because of the student culture, instead of seeing this as a good thing, his parents and himself were ashamed and mad at the teachers for naming him "student of the week."
As teachers of such diverse classes, you need to prepare to know your students' cultures, so this kind of situation doesn't happen. Another thing you could do besides searching and educate yourself is asking, I have found out that asking is better than not doing anything.
Of course, the student is not responsible for you to understand, so in important to have the initiative for yourself. By doing this, you can create a diverse and safe space for your students, it is also important for you to teach your students about different cultures (put in priority the cultures of the students in your class) so that they can learn, be educated in cultural issues, and be empathetic to their classmates.
Questions to Reflect;
- What activities do you think would help your students understand these topics?
- What kind of cultural misunderstandings have you had in your life?
Hey Aranza!
ReplyDeleteI think you explained it perfectly! Cutural miscommunication happens when we allow those differences to affect our relationships.
By the way, the pictures you added were excellent!
Good job!
- Yeira :)
Hello Aranza, I like what you said about being aware of the relationship we construct with our students, it's one of the most important things. Being aware of the cultural difference shows our care for them. I loved your article.
ReplyDeleteSincerely,
Angélica Conde