Intercultural Interview

The cultural interview is to invite someone different culture than themselves and to prepare questions to talk about the differences and similarities between the two participants. The person I chose to interview is my boyfriend David. The reason why I chose to interview him because of his status he is an immigrant in this country. I would like to know the consequences of being illegal immigrant and what's the reason behind he came to this country. I told him I was going to interview him but he didn’t know I was going to ask him questions about his status which was for me was a bit frightening because I know many people don’t like talking about their status and now more because of our president. David came to my house on November 1st around 5 o’clock while waiting for him I made a cup of coffee to take to the park. Once he came to my house we walk to my neighborhood park to do the interview. We sat down at a bench and he thought I was going to ask him basic questions tell me about yourself but never knew they were going to be deeply personal questions.

I will talk about a topic in the social sciences and the theme that I have chosen from the curriculum goal is: “define the concept of culture and provide examples of how culture, gender roles and family relation varies from place to place and how it change over time". I will have Saudi Arabia and Canada as the focus.

For the intercultural interview, I decided to interview my friend Medelyn, a 19 year old female of Honduran and Mexican descent. During the interview, I focused on her Honduran culture, as she was born in Honduras, I asked her a multitude of various questions ranging from formalities in her culture to gender roles to classism in her culture.. The interview lasted about twenty minutes, I asked her about fifteen questions, and after she answered each question there would be a small discussion about her answer. When interviewing Medelyn, it was important to rid myself of any ethnocentrism, assumed cultural similarity or differences, stereotyping, and anything that could create a bias and compromise the interview.

The first point in my theory is that you can better your skills as an interpersonal communicator by better understanding your own culture. DeVito states that there are. “several major cultural distinctions that are crucial for more effective communication” they are: individualism or collectivism, high or low context, high or low power distance, masculinity or femininity, high or low ambiguity tolerance, long or short term orientation, and indulgent or (p. 34). To be able to understand your or anyone else’s culture you must be able to understand the ways that these things affect communication. Once you understand the ways that you are oriented in these seven categories due to enculturation you can understand how you communicate and become a more effective

     In business, successful communication is the key to success, and being able to relate to a customer is the best form of communication. This is why cross-cultural communication is so important as the business world continues to globalize itself. Unfortunately, “A lack of awareness about the culturally prescribed rules and norms of communication behaviors can cause public relations projects to fail, or worse, backfire.” (Zaharna, 2001, p.135).

Interpersonal Communication Competence is defined as constantly communicating in a way that is effective, appropriate, and ethical (McCornack, 2016). When a person is communicating competently, they are following social norms, are able to accomplish their goals, and treating persons in an unbiased manner. In my paper I will be discussing my own interpersonal communication competence and the evaluations that I, and my close companions, have made about my ability to communicate proficiently. I will begin my essay by explaining what effective and appropriate communication consists of, and follow up with my argument on how effective and appropriate I am in my interpersonal relationships. As I continue I will examine my empathy and why I am strong in this aspect of communication, followed by my deliberation of my conversation management and why I am weak in this category and how I could possibly improve. As I near the conclusion of my paper I will focus on my interpersonal communication motivation, knowledge, and skills. After reporting my scores in each category I will reflect on my skills, my lowest score, and explore why I am poorest at this quality and how I can grow in my capabilities. Overall I am a competent communicator, but enhancements can be made in my conversation management, effectiveness and skills in order to build up my competence.

I just had a conversation with Dr. Mark Gooden over in the college of education. Dr. Gooden is the person I reached out to regarding the cultural competency training for the updates. I will talk to Mike and Alexandra about what I learned. I think it will be a good addition to the week, but I need to try to make it work with the schedule – he needs a minimum of about three hours, but I think we can fit it in. Dr. Gooden’s research is actually in this area and he does this training across the state and nationally for school districts, principals, and other businesses. He’s willing to do it as part of his “service to UT” but he did ask if, in lieu of a payment he would typically charge for this kind of training, if we would be willing

The person whom I've decided to interview for this interview project is Julie. I have known her and her family for the majority of my life. So, I thought that she would be an excellent candidate for the project. Already being very comfortable with one another we could have a good informal interview after dinner one night, which is just what we did. She was born and raised here in Greeley, Colorado, in the United States; she is of mixed racial, ancestry, Mexican American and Caucasian, she is currently thirty-one year's old. The oldest of four daughters, and has been married to her husband for ten year's now, he is of Caucasian ancestry, they have no children themselves. Last year she was finally promoted to the general manager of a different

Today, we live in a culturally diverse society due to globalization. As our world grows, expands and become increasingly more interconnected, the need for effective interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become apparent. When people from different cultures interact with one another there is intercultural communication because different cultures create different interpretation and expectations about what is seen as competent behaviors that will enable the construction of shared meanings.

I did this to ensure understanding of the patient’s background. The patient told me that there are a few traditions that occur in this culture; such as root and huckleberry digging, eating Indian celery, drinking Indian Tea for good health when they have a cold, using ghost nets to go fishing, and praying for wellness. After understanding my patient’s background; I started directing questions that revolved around the six components of the Giger and Davidhizar model. The first concept, was communication. I asked my patient, how their culture predominately communicated with each other? My patient responded, by telling me that verbal communication was the biggest way they communicate. Story-telling, playing drums, and dancing were other aspects to communication method; story telling engrained lessons into her and her siblings heads. The second concept is time; I observed and directly asked the patient how their culture viewed time. She responded by notifying me that her culture is very much in the present, however, story-telling focuses on the past. My patient also told me that being present with family was another huge aspect of her culture. As demonstrated by the amount of family members that visited her throughout the two days, that I took care of her. For the third concept of space, I observed the way in which my patient and their family interacted with each other. They interacted with each other closely; very similar to the way in which

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2011). Experiencing intercultural communication. (4th ed., pp. 226-227). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Using the cultural dimensions explored in Module 1, discuss some of the ways in which Australian and New Zealand citizens are members of cultures or clusters that are different from the clusters In Indonesia (about 800 words). Insert the bar chart that you created in the research activity as an Appendix , but use the descriptions of differences between the countries in the text.

Previous researchers have found that for a person to achieve better and more effective communication competence, it is necessary to develop skills that allow an appropriate participation in specific situations. The ability to listen, ask questions, and express concepts or ideas effectively is an important part of communication competence. Intercultural communication presents an unexplored and challenging field that needs to be understood for a better development in communication. (Dillon and McKenzie, 1998). The variables of listening depend on the different perceptions that a person obtains through their cultural background. Furthermore, culture often affects the structure of consciousness in the act of listening. When a person seeks to

It is not easy to define culture because culture is too broad a concept, can be both abstract and specific. However, what is agreed is culture covers all faces of our life as well as direct the way we behave, interact and communicate. (Liu et al., 2011). One popular definition is that “Culture is the total way of life of a group of people, comprising of the deposit of knowledge, experience, belief, values, traditions, religion, and notion of time, roles, spatial relations, worldviews, material objects and geographic territory”. (Liu et al., 2011, p.57). In this essay, I will analyse components and characteristics of culture, and based on that grounds, I will reflect on my own culture-being a Vietnamese. Dodd (1998) considered that culture is made up by three layers which consist of the core layer, the intermediate layer and the outer layer. I will examine what values and beliefs are considered important in my culture. Those are components of the inner core. Then, I will take some examples of the intermediate layer (expression of cultural activities by manifestation) such as communication patterns, customs and festivals.

Intercultural communication competence refers to the ability of an individual to adapt and communicate appropriately and effectively across a wide array of cultural contexts. That is to say, for an individual to be considered an intercultural communicator they must understand other’s cultures as well as they understand their own, and apply this understanding to communication (Chen 1-2). With the increasing diversity at the workplace, school and other social settings, it has become increasingly important to learn how to communicate with people from a diverse array of cultures. More importantly, adapting to a more effective intercultural communication competence model provides us with learning opportunities occasioned by the interaction with people from other backgrounds. The intercultural communication competence model comes with some key components including tolerance for uncertainty, self-knowledge, and motivation. The greatest and most important of these aspects is motivation. An individual must be willing to foster relationships with people from a different cultural background. If an individual lacks the willingness to promote intercultural relationships, then other aspects of the intercultural communication model become moot.