Misunderstanding

Misunderstanding in communication occurs most often when each party involved only has one point of view, that is of his/her own. Constrained by experience and knowledge, individual point of view is likely to be skewed and partial, expecially when engaging in intercultural communication.

language might be the biggest problem during intercultural communication. When I fisrt came to Singapore in 2005, aged 15, I was nervous when speaking English. I didn't go through strigent English speaking training in China, and I was astonished when I found out the level of command of English required in Singapore. To make matters worse, I started to stutter whenever I struggled to find the right words to say. So with broken English in bad grammer and stuttering, I could barely give an introducation of myself. That was when social out-casting kicked in bewteen me and the classmates. The lesson for all those students from non-English Speaking countries and having language problems is that suck it up and try your best to complete the language transition as quickly as possible.

The good thing was that China and Singapore, bing Asian countries, shared many cultural traits. An interesting discovery was that when I first met an Indian student in my class and said 'you look like a piece of charcoal', I got the cold eyes from all Indian sudents in the class; however after two years of getting to know each other, I repeated the same metaphor and it was receievd with good humor. So I guess comments like this must be used carefully when talking to someone of a different country. I am not saying never use them, but be smart with them.