I interviewed 5 experts who are online English teachers in the UK. They have classes with students from all over the world so they need to have good cross-cultural communication skills.
Based on my previous research on cultural competence, I found people’s attitude is more important than the knowledge of culture.
By interviewing the experts, they feel that people are really accepting in London. And their way of being culturally competent is don’t think different culture is a big deal and try to find similarities with others.
Josh said something that inspired me. He said “We are all the same. We are all human but it’s easy to forget. At a lot of times, we just see what is different. That is the important thing. You shouldn’t think that people are different, it’s better to think we are the same. That always helps. even if we cannot communicate confidently, sometimes is not just even about that, you just have to find some way that you can relate, then understand each other. I think this is a good attitude to have.”
I created a draft intervention and tested this idea with my stakeholders who are not from China. I started a new topic to find some similarities between us. For example, both of us are introverts, the food we like. And I found it will be easier to have a conversation than just talking about culture.
I’m going to explore this intervention and use similarity to help people make connections.