Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Five years ago, when my elder cousin and I were walking along the street at Chinatown, a Westerner tourist approached my pretty cousin to take a photo with him as he wanted to take a photograph with the locals. Initially my cousin revealed her unwillingness to take the photo to me as she did not wish to take it with strangers. However, after convinced by me that it would be fast, my cousin went on to take a photograph with the Westerner. When taking the photograph, the Westerner put both of his hands on my cousin’s waist and I saw that my cousin’s face turned white at once. To make the situation worse, he gave my cousin a hug to thank her for the photo before leaving. That was when my cousin finally yelled at him, “Hey! Don’t touch me!” The Westerner tourist was very much caught by surprise due to the huge reaction by my cousin. My cousin and I eventually walked away without hearing him out.

Given that the Westerner tourist had no hidden agenda, clearly, the situation here is due to the difference in cross cultural non-verbal communication style. Westerners are brought up to be more open-minded and straight-forward and the Asians are generally more conservative and less direct. This forms a kind of cross cultural communication difference between Westerners and Asians and thus, in turn, creates the difficulties in understanding each other which leads to the existence of misunderstandings between each other like the given scenario. Firstly, the direct approach by the Westerner was thought to be bold by my cousin who is conservative. Asians generally do not have body interaction with people whom they do not know, except for handshake, thus the Westerner had scared my cousin off with the intimate action, as seen by my cousin.

However, to solve the problem of difference in culture, understanding of each others’ cultures is important. With globalization, information of the cultural background of the countries is accessible on the Internet, books, etc. Should the Westerner have known more about the culture of Asians, he would not have scared off my cousin, leaving her with the thought of him trying to take advantage of her!

Potential Research Project Topic

As a Chemistry student who will not go through Industrial Attachment (IA) during the course of study in NUS, I hoped to work as an intern in areas which are related to my field of studies during my last vacation so that I could gain some hands-on practical experience before graduation. It was tough to find a science-related temporary job through job agencies or from newspapers, hence I went to the NUS eJob Service website to search for related internships available for application. However, I realised that there were very few job postings looking for science undergraduates and most were seeking for engineering, IT and business students.

From what I observed, Engineering students have to undergo IA during their course of study in NUS as it is a requirement for graduation. This is beneficial to the Engineering students in their job search upon graduation as they would be equipped with prior working experience related to their field of studies. Although Business students do not go through IA, there is the NUS Biz Career Service, from the School of Business which provides a dedicated suite of professional career-related services to the Business undergraduates and MBA students. What about the Science students?


(Screen shot of full-time job listing provided by NUS eJob Services)

As mentioned, job listings in the science field provided by the NUS eJob Service are relatively few, compared to other fields. Thus, in contrast, Science students who wish to take up a full-time job or internship in the science field have to be more independent in their job search. They are also more likely to face difficulties since, unlike the Engineering students, most of the Science students in NUS do not have any hands-on experience from Industrial Attachment and Internship (with the exceptional of students from certain disciplines such as Applied Chemistry).

In view of this, the general research question on this issue would be: Do the Science students from NUS feel that there is sufficient internship or job opportunities offered by the school? A survey would be carried out to find out how many of the Science students wish to work in profession in science field, whether they feel the services offered by the NUS Career Services Centre and the various departments from Science Faulty fulfil their needs in job search and applications. Lastly, the survey would investigate whether they are in favour of the establishment of a similar career centre as NUS Biz Career Service, which caters specially to NUS Science students to provide them help and support in their internship or job search and to provide the kind of services they wish to attain from this career centre. To meet the objective of the research study of establishing a career centre within Science Faculty, the research report would be submitted to the NUS Faculty of Science, Vice Dean of Graduate programme as a student's feedback for consideration of establishing a Science Career Centre.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

I would like to share with you an interpersonal conflict that I experienced during my first year in junior college when I did my project work (PW) as part of the A level program. As the project group was assigned to us by our tutor, we did not get to choose our group members. Initially, things were fine and my group mates could get along together quite well, until one of my group mates (let's call him B), started to skip our project meetings for no reason. As a group leader, I went up to him and encouraged him to come for our project meetings, but to no avail. After a discussion with the rest of our group mates, we decided to approach our tutor to seek help as he refused to listen to us.

B began to turn up for the subsequent meetings after being advised by the tutor but somehow, due to some misunderstanding, he sort of blamed us for "complaining" to the tutor about him and appeared to be against me, especially. During the meetings, he did not contribute much in our group work and would even distract us by joking and talking about personal stuff with another group mate. Whenever we had to rush to complete certain stages of the project, that kind of attitude of his really got us fed up and we were left with no choice but to approach the tutor for help again.

However, things did not turn out to be what I expected. After seeking for help a second time from our tutor, I found myself being bombarded with vulgarities by B on MSN! He probably hated me for going up to the tutor again. In a fit of anger, I replied, "You did not listen to us and contribute much in our project. I find it even harder to work with you now. With your attitude like this, perhaps, you shouldn't be in JC."

I cried throughout the night as I was very hurt by the words he used on me. Was that what I truly deserved? After that incident, I stopped talking to him and till now, I regret to say that the conflict is still unresolved. Perhaps, I did not handle the situation well at that point of time. If you were in my shoes, how would you react and manage the conflict?

Effective Communication Skills

Currently, one of the modules that I am taking in NUS is “Professional Communication - Principles & Practice”. The main aim of this module is to teach the students how to become an effective communicator in various social settings, especially in the workplace.

I recalled that my classmates and I were ‘forced’ by our teacher to attend compulsory workshops on effective communication when we were in secondary school as we were told that it would be helpful to us. Indeed, in the inter-connected world that we are living today, where we get to interact with (different) people everyday, being able to communicate effectively is very important to build up healthy relationships so that messages are put across tactfully and correctly to the intended receiver. As communication builds bridges between people, being able to communicate effectively will prevent communication breakdown and enable me to build up good relationships with my families, friends, lecturers, lab technicians and course mates, as well as obtain accurate information from them by practicing active listening. Besides, having equipped with effective communication skills, I will gain an edge over other candidates during job interviews. In one way or another, it will also help greatly in my job performance at the workplace, where office politics often exist. In short, effective communication skills plays a vital role in life, be it family, social or working life.

I have always been thinking of attending the workshops organized by the NUS Career Centre so that I can prepare myself for the working world upon graduation next year. Now, I am glad that I have the chance to take this interesting module for a better understanding of effective communication in the workplace. After all, I have spent a hefty amount of over 1200 bidding points to bid for this module!

Introduction

Dear All,

Firstly, let me welcome you to sabrinahe.blogspot.com!

This blog is set up to complete my e-portfolio assignment for ES2007s PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, one of the modules that I am taking this semester. If you have any feedback or comments on my blog, please do feel free to drop me an email at sabrina.hec@gmail.com.