Summary post

The past few weeks has been an enriching learning journey for me. After taking this course, I feel more equipped and prepared to interact with people from different cultural and racial groups. This because the topics we discussed in class has broadened my knowledge, insights and awareness of the many inherent differences in which people communicate, interact and express their thoughts and feelings. However, I feel that all this knowledge I have acquired throughout the span of this course is only the tip of the ice berg. This is because these topics are only the general framework and theories behind how people behave and communicate in different situations. One has to actually be on the ground, interacting and participating in various day-to-day communicative situations i.e. speech acts, speech events etc so as to fully grasp and understand how to interact appropriately with people from different and diverse cultural groups.

In addition, I also feel that the course has heightened my interest in the area of cross cultural comunications as well as enhanced my awareness of the many different ways in which people express themselves and communicate in their everyday situations.

To conlcude, I think that even though the learning journey of being competent and effective in cross-cultural communication is a long and difficult one, the foundation and core value of this is to simply treat people from different backgrounds and cultures in a genuine, accepting and non-judgemental manner, despite all our inherent differences in culture, values, mannerism and belives. This will help in promoting a greater understanding in communicating across cultures and reducing the occurences of any unnecessary misunderstandings and miscommunication.