Intercultural competence

Since this week’s class I had been questioning myself: what is the appropriate way to show respect to other cultures? If I am in a foreign country, how should I behave? When I meet someone from another cultural background in Singapore, how should I behave? Are these two situations similar? Is there a ground rule for intercultural communications? If there is one, what it is?

I imagined that if I am an Afghanistan whom is meeting someone from other country. He kisses my wife’s hand when we meet. How will I react to that? I probably will fight him right on the spot, because it is such a humiliation to an Afghanistan.

However if the same thing happened outside of my country, I will probably suppress my anger.

Why the differences?

 I realize that there are 2 factors affecting our intercultural behavior.

1.       What do we expect others to do? This affects our reactions to others’ action.

2.       What do others expect us to do? This affects our own action.

In the first case, I expect the guest to know the basic rule in Afghanistan. Even if I know that he meant to greet by kissing my wife’s hand, it is not acceptable because I expect him to follow my country’s custom. If I am abroad, I do not expect people to know and follow my behavioral guidelines. That is why I have different attitudes towards the same behavior.

In some Muslim countries, people are strictly forbidden to eat in public during Ramadan. This is certainly not the case in Singapore. In a multicultural country like Singapore, people respect each other’s habits. When we lower our expectation toward each other, chances of intercultural conflict is reduced. The only way to find out what others’ expectations , is by knowing their culture.

Singapore society is highly modernized. Singapore government effectively built a multiracial, yet harmonic society. Singaporean, especially the younger generation, has relatively unified culture value. I think that is why I survive until now. I do not remember offending anyone culturally, because I may have done that without noticing.

To be honest, I have never really taken a time to study other cultures. I know Chinese culture, because I am a part of it. I have some Muslim friends. I know their habits and values well. But I never have the chance to know other cultures. Apart from these, people from different age groups have different values as well. I know my parents and grandparents well because I have been living with them for 23 years. However other people may be different from them. I have a certain level of knowledge which I have acquired through the years living in Singapore, but actually it may be far not enough.

My strength is I have learned how to communicate effectively. This helps me to reduce the chance of causing misunderstanding. On the other hand, my English capability may be a problem.

 I enjoy talking to other people, men, women, elderlies, kids (well actually not every kid). This is an advantage. I learned dialectics and socialism by myself so that I can talk to my grandfather.  I am open and curious to acquire knowledge of other cultures. To enhance my culturally competence, I will start by learning from my friends from different cultures. When I talk to them, I will start to understand their value and culture, instead of just food or customs.

I have watched significant amount of discovery channel and national geography documentaries. I have read books from lonely planet series. This habit also enhances my intercultural competence indirectly. However, I only read books about places that interest me. I will change that.

Last but not least, the most important rule of communication is respect. From my experience, treating others with respect is the universal safe line of interpersonal relationship.

Good luck to everyone’s mid-term man.All the best.

Application letter

Zhu Wuzhong

addressXXXXXX

Phone Number

Email Address

16Sep2012

(Receiver’s contact infomations)

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to apply for NUS overseas college programme 2013-2014.

Apart from fulfilling the listed requirements, I am ordinary.

I graduated from Ghim Moh Secondary school, and then finished my A-level in Jurong Junior college. After two years of national service as combat signaler, in 2011 I enrolled into National University of Singapore to study Computer and Electrical engineering. I am currently a year 2 student .By june I will have the required 80 MCs to participate in this program. I am not good at math and physics, but I love programming and building circuits. My CAP is 3.5 for now. Currently I am not involved in any CCA or student society.

My entrepreneurial aspiration is to create smart shops/homes, ideally require minimum man power to operate.

Compare with starting up companies in university years, I prefer to acquire sufficient knowledge before making my own business. I worked as sushi chef for UmiSushi in 2011 summer and sales assistant for NET fashion in 2012 summer. These experiences give me well insights of food and beverage as well as retail industry. By participating NOC programme, I hope to learn entrepreneur knowledge which I thought only can be learned after graduation. That is important to me because by talking to seniors and formal participants I learned that NOC is a once in lifetime opportunity to develop entrepreneur ability. I may learn the knowledge I want quickly, much quicker than any other form of education. That is the reason I know I am not outstanding, yet still taking courage to write this letter.

Following are the reasons for me to believe that I am suitable for this programme.

I am able to adopt into new environment quickly. I am from china Fujian province. I came to Singapore by the age of 15. I have 8 years of overseas study experience, and handled it very well.

By playing different roles as a student, waiter, soldier, chef, sales assistant, project group member etc, I was exposed to thousands of people literally. I have well trained communication skill and interpersonal skills. I got along with different kind of people easily, probably because I am normal as everyone else.

I participate in different projects in NUS, software engineering as well as hardware engineering. I think being a CEG student gives me the advantage that I have both electrical and computer engineering back ground. Companies may need student like me whom has relatively specialistic knowledge in both fields. I am NUS trained for C++ programming, electrical engineering, circuit programming, micro controller programming, C# programming as well as communication skill. The companies may assume that I have sufficient knowledge in these fields.

I am proficient in English and Mandarin.

I am normal. I think this programme may want to include some people like me rather than having a cohort of genius, presidents and vice-presidents. This programme is meant to build entrepreneurs, people like me may be a different test sample, or control group. (just kidding) I am ordinary, but I do satisfy the requirement “strong entrepreneur aspiration”.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to speaking with you.

I can be reached via email at XXX@XXXX.com or 65-xXXXXX.

Yours faithfully

Zhu Wuzhong

Resolving interpersonal conflicts.

Last week, my lab partner A told me a story about himself.

Last semester, A was in a project group with other 3 classmates. One of his group mates B did not participate actively while doing project. He used excuses to delay his submission frequently. As a team, that affected everyone else’s plan. So B was given a lot of pressure.

As the due date getting closer, A got more and more anxious because their project was extremely lagged. A tried to push B to perform better, but B seemed not giving any positive response. One day they had a big quarrel after A accused B for missing group meeting again. B said A did not understand his situation (B was trying to switch course because studying engineering was too stressful for him). The workload assigned to him was too much and he already tried his best.

A did not told me the rest of the story. Luckily, they submitted the project on time at the end, but I can tell that A was still angry at B.

I use this story as an example because I think most of us may have similar experience as a university student. There are a few reasons contributing to this conflict. The first one is both A and B were in a very stressful state. A was pressured because of the due date. B was pressured by A. Therefore the conflict outbroke easily. The second reason is they did not understand each other’s position. When B could not submit his work on time, instead of helping him with his work, the rest of his group mates added more pressure on B. They did not know that B was actually putting in the same amount of effort (or maybe more). The third reason is B did not sound out when he noticed he could not finish the work on time. He affected the whole team because of his self-esteem. That was very selfish.

To solve an interpersonal conflict, staying calm is the first thing we should do. Communication and sense of sympathy are the keys we should use. If I were A, I would ask B whether he needed any help with his work rather than assuming he was too lazy to finish it arbitrarily. If I were B, I would ask for help when I knew I would not finish on time.

For anyone who is reading this post, do you have any similar experience? Were you A or B? What will/did you do in this situation?

 Sorry for the long post.I tried to make it shorter,but the idea was not properly expressed.

Always stay cool.peace.

not cool. cool.

Why effective communication skills are important to me.

We learnt three main things this week -basic theory of communication, verbal communication skills and non-verbal communication skills.This course has already changed my understanding of communication, despite the fact that we still have 10 more weeks to go.I found that the ability to communicate effectively is very important, not only in the business world, but also in our daily lives.

Why is effective communication important for me?

I took the course cs1231 during my first semester in university. It required students to form teams of four and handle difficult projects.We did not do very well, mainly because we were busy trying to persuade other team members to accept our own ideas.Looking back, we could have avoided that if we communicated properly. We were barely a team at that time, and could have done better with effective communication, which improves the integrity and solidarity within a team.Hence, our working efficiency can definitely be very much improved. In the business world, unity is strength. Effective communication skill is a tool that everyone should acquire.

Another thing I noticed in the ES2007s class was that students were more willing to express opinions, rather than listen.That made me think about the differences between es2007s and other classes. Effective team leaders - Mdm Radhika in this case - have immense influence on their teams. Effective communicating is not only about expressing ideas clearly, but also creates healthy bonds between team members.I used to think that leadership is a characteristic that certain people have and others do not. But after examining successful business examples, I realised that anyone can be a qualified leader through good communication skills.

As an engineering student, my field of study revolved mostly around grades, and I used to discount the importance of communication as a result. But now I realise that good communication skills are very important, much like creativity or intelligence.

The last thing to take note is that communication skills are important for all team members - not just the leader, for it streamlines the delivery of messages.As members of a group, we are not all giving orders. Receiving them is equally important. A team player should learn how to listen before he speaks.

To me ,communication skill is something important but I did not acquire. I believe by finishing this course, my fellow classmates and I will have a different view about communication.