I am a pure Chinese student ----born in China, grow in China, and will also live in China in the future. I choose to exchange to National University of Singapore this semester, to develop a better understanding of different cultures in the world.
I have a American friend named Robert. We are on a same class. I’ve noticed that he likes to lift his right leg on the seat in front of him and seldom brings & reads books in the classroom. Besides, he likes to walk on the seats along to go out after class, which I believe is not the common behavior for American students. I mentioned this during one of our talks after lab. He just said “it’s ok and that doesn’t matter”. However, I think his behavior didn’t show much respect to the lecturer.
I realize there is cultural difference here. In China, students will always sit neatly in an orderly fashion during class. Almost nobody sits on the table or lifts his leg on the table, which is considered to be impolite and will lead to unaccepted by others. So Chinese students may care more before they do things different from what they have seen before. Thus, they tend to have a conservative personality and are not encouraged to come up with strange ideas. (Situation is changing due to the development of China)
However, in America, both teachers and students are free in class. They can either sit on the table or lean on a desk. They can also raise any question whenever they like. Privacy is stressed in American culture so people tend to have more individual characters. They like to behave differently, will(spelling error) which can capture more attention, also lead to many creative ideas.
As I think of this, I have better understanding of his behavior. Besides, we also talk about many other cultural differences. Now we are good friends and I enjoy the communication a lot.
What I am trying to make clear is that we should put ourselves in other’s position during our intercultural communication, and be a good listener & learner to understand different cultures better. We needn’t to avoid the intercultural communication. Be active and try to enjoy it. After all, there still exist a lot of things in common between different cultures.
re-edited in different color
re-edited in different color
