As learner on how to teach the English language (TESOL Program) and living in a non-Western country, I have faced a lot of challenges in understanding the lessons. Now that I have learned these miscommunication tendencies, especially in learning. I have found out that each culture has its own identity and way of expressing themselves. On the other hand, success and triumph may also be included in my total experience. Good thing my country’s second language is English. It helped me to somehow be already immersed in the language although some context may be different.
In the future, if I’m eyeing to teach this language, these principles and bits of information that learned will surely help me to adjust my way of teaching and even gestures and facial expression sometimes to convey a particular lesson or principle.
While I was scrutinizing the classroom conversations and the examples being discussed, questions like “So how to fix or settle a certain misunderstanding caused by being culturally different from each other?”, While being respectful of other’s culture is of tantamount consideration, up to what extent would you adapt and adjust? Should you change your ways to be culturally accepted in the current place that you live in or you just explain and expect for them to do the adjustment?
I have more appreciation now on diversity of culture. This knowledge helped me to understand that I should broaden my mind and do necessary adjustments as such situation of miscommunications are inevitable. I have more understanding on the behavior of people that I meet and will have met in this course of learning. This understanding of their behavior will help me a lot in giving the much-needed understanding, compassion, and empathy towards others.
My home culture can be improved by these principles in eliminating some parts of our culture which are not helpful. Some parts of it are practicing traditions which are no longer necessary or relevant in our days. Advancement can happen if you try to filter out some parts of your culture that are not doing any good to you.
In summary, I’d like to discuss some potential cultural differences that my country has and can also cause serious miscommunications to foreigners. First is the Manyana habit. This is procrastination. We are so comfortable telling ourselves that things that we can do today can still be done tomorrow. Therefore, we will just delay it and thus result to much lesser effectivity and efficiency. Filipinos think we are good at multitasking and versatile when working. I agree to this but to the point of sometimes, having the tendency to just delay some of the ‘can easily be done’ projects for the later work. In return, we cram. Another insightful
Another insightful example is, like Latin-Americans, when we say yes, we don’t want to really say yes or no. We would rather let you wait for nothing rather than be upfront. I noticed this when applying to several jobs here in my country. The HR personnel will not usually tell you if you fail a certain interview in applying for a job. Instead, it will just tell you to wait for their call. Which, based on my own experiences, never happen. I guess we can get a lot of good things from other’s cultures as well. And learning theirs will not only be to our advantage but will let us have more empathy and lead us to greater understanding that all of us are designed uniquely and should respect and try to cooperate to each other, regardless of miscommunications.
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