for last week's class, we were discussing about one of the important thing when you go aboard. "intercultural competence" means that we can communicate with other people with different culture effectively.
so, for our homework we need to find some of the information that will be very useful for us in the future. as an international student, we are not only going to deal with all Americans. but, bear in mind that we will need to communicated with the people that come for all over the world. for instance from Saudi Arabia, Japan, Thailand etc. so in order to make everything goes smoothly we need to at least know a little a bit about their culture.
thus, my group had decided to come up with the topic "things that will make Koreans feel offended". so basically, we were presenting about the Korean culture to all our friend. don't worry it is not about K-pop at all. hhaha..actually we got all of this from Mr, Google :P
1. Sticking the chopstick in the rice bowl
as the picture shown above, for korean sticking the chopstick like that is something that can be consider as rude. it is because they usually put something that look kinda like the chopstick during funeral. so, it just like you are eating with dead person when you are sticking you chopstick like that at dining table. oh, actually Japanese all feel the same way when they see people sticking their chopstick in the rice bowl.
2. Writing a name with red ink
i still remember when i was a primary school student, there are some of my friend said that 'if you wrote a name by using a red pen, he/she will die' as i grow older, i come up with the conclusion that statement is just like one of the pranks made by those children. unfortunately, it is a fact! even though it not usually happen, but it is one of the things believed by the people that lived under the same sky with us. so, we still need to respect their culture.
3. Touch their shoulder
in our culture, we usually touch our friends or family member's shoulder to comfort them. but it doesn't apply in the same way to Korean. it is because they consider that we are treating them like a child when we touch their shoulder. so, we really need to be careful especially when we are interacting with the Koreans that are older than us.
last but not least, what i can conclude is there are still a lot of culture that we need to explore in order for us to become someone with intercultural competence. in my point of view, i think it is really helpful for us to understand all these cultures by directly interact with the people that practice those culture. and one of the best way is to study aboard. for me, it is just like to kill two birds with one stone. it is because you will have the opportunity of gain knowledge and experience a lot of new things at the same time.
culture is just like the rainbow that make our world colourful :)
