Effective Intercultural Communication

Effective Intercultural Communication

Effective intercultural communication, for me studying in Singapore, has never been so important since I was born to this world. And to interpret my understanding of intercultural contact, it is quite necessary for me to separate it into two parts as leaving mainland China is a big change for me.

During the past 18 years before I flied to this multicultural country, I was like living in a more single cultural environment if compared to the life here now in Singapore. However, this does not mean that the cultural contexts in China are of merely one group. We indeed have 56 ethnic groups and each of them still maintains their unique and traditional customs as well as their conventions. But actually most of them are minorities and the largest group is Han like me. So it may not be surprising that the mainstream of Chinese culture is a more majority group dominant one. And with the step of world changing, the modern values come to almost everyone and it somehow lead us to form a new common social culture which combines and covers foreign cultures from other parts of the world. Always, when new values come, they always meet and have impact on old ones. So here, in the first part of my understanding, the intercultural communication lays on the local and foreign cultures. A very simple example of this can be the emerging gaps between different generations, which is considered as a result of cultural shock. Take myself as an example, when I thought following the American pop style is quite cool, my parents might not see it the same way as me. Another example can be that traditional Chinese people especially elder generations may regard the communication style used by teenagers as too open and inappropriate. These internal gaps between one nation’s different age groups seem to be unavoidable but I think there is no need to worry too much about this. In order to conduct effective communications with older people, I just need first to identify the common values that we both treasure and then try to focus on it instead of creating conflicts by showing difference. This is actually also a main method in my second part for communicating with foreign culture.

After I came to Singapore, the first thing that changed is the cultural environment. I have become a foreigner to this country. And there is no doubt that the way I was used to communicate is to be modified according to the new context. Not saying more than ten or twenty English word before suddenly changed into using and speaking English every day. So it is obvious that effective communication needs proper English for me in Singapore. And also I need to be open and curious to gain as much knowledge as possible to get accustomed to the local living styles, to achieve which I have been observing the local communication ways and try to follow it. I even took the Singapore study module in the first year to learn more about the country’s history and its perspective of the near and far future and the results turn out to be satisfying and that really helped me a lot although it was sometimes coming with lots of reading materials. During the module, I was required to apply critical thinking skills to analyze and express my own understanding of the social issues face by Singapore. So as a foreign student, I have already tried to view things from another perspective when I went through all the topics related to that module.

To have a summary, studying abroad itself is a way to test and enhance my ability to have effective intercultural communications. And during the past two years, it has become more and more frequently and my understanding still needs to be improved and I am quite confident with it.