Don’t Misunderstand Me! Sarah Coutts sarahcoutts@sen.go.kr www.smoeworkshopsources.wordpress.com

What is culture?

Understanding Culture How do you eat your main meal each day? How do you communicate with family and friends? How important is religion to your family? What happens if/when you do the wrong thing at school? What do you do on the weekend? What is your favourite food? How do you dress? What do you find funny?

What causes misunderstandings? Degree of ambiguity created, usually unintentionally, between the speaker and the recipient. The recipient may make unrealistic assumptions.

What could the recipient assume in each message?

My work is not important to my tutor, and I have to wait for feedback. My tutor is clearly busy with other students and cannot be bothered to spend time with me. My tutor values me and wants to spend half an hour going through my work with me. My work must be so bad that my tutor needs to spend a whole half an hour with me. I will now have to wait anxiously for Friday to come and will not be able to get on with my other work.

HIGH-CONTEXT (Indirect) LOW-CONTEXT (Direct)   More homogenous Shared expectations for interactions Assumptions can be made about other people’s behaviors Less need to be explicit in speech Words don’t convey as much meaning More heterogeneous Assumptions can’t be made about people or conversation paths Can’t rely on context Trust the literal meaning of words We bring our own upbringing and experiences to our communication. Factors that influence our communication: personality, willingness to be open-minded, tolerance, previous experiences, positive experiences, degree of cultural difference. Ask trainees to think of an example in which they have had a negative first experience, which shapes their overall opinion and attitude to a group.

Identify the communication style of each of the following statements:

Think about a time when your communication style clashed with the style of someone else.

Make the indirect statements more direct. INDIRECT  DIRECT Make the indirect statements more direct.

GESTURES