Cultural Activity is my latest intervention to test if people can understand cultures better by finding similarities. I chose the participants on the street and invited them to join my intervention. Some people are willing to join my intervention but I also been refused by many people. When I reflected about it, I thought the way I asked questions should be improved. And this intervention may takes people a few minutes so I should chose people who looked not in rush.
My plan of this intervention was asking two participants who are from different countries and answer the cultural questions together. I asked people who are not from China to do this intervention with me. The first participant is from Bangladesh. Based on the five questions we answered, she found our cultures have similarities. The second group are participants from France and Spain. Before doing this intervention, one of them was not confident enough with his English and his cohort said this activity can also help them practice their English.
In addition, I did this intervention with two experts and they gave me some feedback about this. Both of them found this activity is fun but they had different thoughts about the differences and similarities of cultures. The first expert had an opinion that basic requirements of human being are the same and we should look beyond the culture. However, the second expert likes the difference of cultures because it’s interesting.
Based on the feedback from my stakeholders and experts, I found they are happy to do this activity with people from different backgrounds and it helped them to know more about others. I think this activity can remind people about the similarities of cultures but it is not deep enough to make people think beyond the culture.
Joseph is an Australian Online English teacher who had lived in Thailand for more than 10 years. He has 4 years of teaching experience with people from different countries and experiences of living in different countries so he has a high level of cultural competence.
I randomly picked 4 questions and we answered them together. He told me some cultures of Australia but also other countries based on his cultural knowledge.
Joseph’s feedback
“Personally, I am fine with that. They are not intrusive questions and not bother me anyway. Interesting questions because it highlights that we have common things. We do celebrate the same things in a little different way. With all that country are being to, we eat different food, we look different, people are different religions, different everything but we are all the same. We had a basic fundamental of human beings, we all want the same thing.”
“You gotta remove the culture and that is what I did. I look beyond. Of course there’s difference between culture and languages. The basic of the human are the same.”
Expert 2
Alma is an Online Spanish teacher and she has lived in London for 4 years. She loves getting to know different cultures and always has conversations about culture with her students from all over the world.
I did this intervention with Alma. She explained a lot about her culture such as what nap actually is in Spain. And she is always curious about Chinese culture as well and she asked many questions. So we only had time to do 3 questions in this card game.
Alma’s feedback
“I think it’s very fun. I think it’s really interesting to know the differences between cultures. Especially with cultural differences to China and Spain because I think here in Spain, although there are many Chinese people, they normally have their communities and I don’t really know. I mean I think now with Chinese culture, a lot of teenagers nowadays have classmates who are Chinese, but when I was in school, I had never known one Chinese classmate so I never had a chance to talk to people from China, talk about these things. I don’t think we know much about China. It’s really interesting to talk to you. All the little things you told me, I find really fun.”
“Clearly, there are similarities. Even though the cultures are different, I think Asian cultures are different from European cultures. I think there are lots of similarities. I think the traditional knowledge, all those little things that pass down from generation to generation, are those pieces of advice. I think they are very similar. I think the fact that food is so important. You have your time, you might organise your day around food as well, like in the morning, you had to take into account that you’re gonna have breakfast and then lunch. You will have dinner around the table with your family and talk about your day. Yeah, I think there are lots of similarities. Families are important to every culture. The way we try to raise children is also very similar.
Tips to get along with people from different cultures
“I think the most important thing is to be open and very curious. Not to be judgmental. I find it really interesting to see how people do things differently. And actually, I really like to try. Every time you tell me about those little things, I really would have to try. I think it is the differences that make it interesting rather than you know obviously, we have things in common but I think the differences are very interesting. It helps us to understand the culture. I like the differences. I see the similarities but I love the differences.”
I started my intervention by asking people on the street to play this cultural activity. I changed a little bit rule of this game.
I used my card game to ask participants to answer 5 questions. If there is only one participant, I will represent Chinese culture to answer questions with them. If there are two participants who are from different cultural backgrounds, I will ask both of them to answer the questions. The goal of this game not only is finding similarities but also getting to know about different cultures.
I found my stakeholders randomly on the street. Not everyone I got in touch with was willing to play. At last, I got 3 participants offline. However, these participants didn’t want to show their faces in my project so I recorded the video without filming their faces.
Participators from Spain and France They refused to attend this activity
Participant 1:
Participant 1 is from Bangladesh
Question 1: How do you celebrate the new year?
Both of us will have a meal with family.
Question 2: What time do most of the stores close in your country?
Participant 1: Sundays are at 5pm, weekdays they close at 8 or 9.
Me: Most of the stores close at 9 or 10 but some of them at 6.
Question 3: What do you do to stop hiccups?
Participant 1: I will hold my breath for like 30 seconds or just drink a lot of water.
Me: We will have sugar on the mouth or be scared by others.
Question 4: Do you like to take a nap?
Participant 1: Yes, I like to take a nap when I come home afterwards.
Me: Me too. I can’t do it every day but I like it.
Question 5: What are weddings like in your culture?
Participant 1:They have to be very big and grand. The bride has to wear red and the bride has to be given away by her dad. It is common in a lot of cultures. Traditional music is always played in the background.
Me: In tradition, the couple needs to wear red but nowadays people also like to wear white as western-style. We will have a big meal in a hotel. The couple will invite their friends and relatives. They will receive lucky money.
Feedback:
“Thank you for picking me. I think it’s special. I think our cultures are very similar. We have more similarities than the differences.”
Participants 2 and 3
Participant 2 is from Spain and Participant 3 is from France
Question 1: What time do most of the stores close in your country?
Participant 2: It depends on the store but normally 7 or 8pm.
Participant3: Same.
Question 2: How do you celebrate the coming of a new baby?
Participant 2: Have a party with family or friends.
Participant 3: Have a party with family or friends too.
Question 3: What meal would you serve if you wanted to help visitors to understand your culture?
Participant 2: Tortilla, paella, jamón.
Participant 3: Escargot.
Question 4: What birthday traditions do you have?
Participant 2: Cake and party with friends and family.
Participant 3: Yes, cake, party, Saturday night and alcohol.
Question 5: What’s your favourite breakfast?
Participant 2: English breakfast for me or tostada with jamon and tomato and oliver oil.
Participant 3: English breakfast.
Feedback:
Participant 2: “This (activity) can help me to practice my English.” “I have a group of people all are from different country, Japanese, Chinese, Brazilian. For me, I like this (activity)to know about other cultures. Yes, it helps me to understand cultures better.”
Participant 3: “Yes, we are same because we need to eat, to live. Spain and France are close so we have similarities but if you ask other people, for example Japanese. The answer can be different. “
The goal of this intervention is to help people find cultural similarities and get an understanding of each other.
Question supporting the intervention:
If people can get an understanding of others from different cultural backgrounds by finding similarities.
Activity/event allowing users to engage:
It is a game about asking questions.
Online version
At this stage, I contacted my stakeholders via the language exchange app so it’s easier for participators to play this game with me. I will ask participants who are from different cultural backgrounds to play this game. They can get one point when they find a similarity. Before the game started, I will ask participators how many points they expect to get and then compare it with the actual points they get after the game. In addition, they will be interviewed about their feeling.
12 Questions
What’s your favourite breakfast?
How many main meals do you have a day?
What time do you eat the main meals of the day?
What birthday traditions do you have?
What meal would you serve if you wanted to help visitors to understand your culture?
How do you celebrate the coming of a new baby?
What are weddings like in your culture?
How do you celebrate the new year?
What time do most of the stores close in your country?
Do you like to take a nap?
Is there any tradition when people move into a new place?
What do you do to stop hiccups?
Offline version
I made these question cards for participators to choose questions randomly.
I will ask participants who are from different cultural backgrounds to play this game. Each person can randomly pick a question card and answer this question with me together. If he/she has a similar answer, he/she can take this card. Every person has 5 chances to pick a card and the winner is the person who has the more cards at last.
The research question is “How can young people develop cultural competence when they are living in London?” Cultural competence is an important ability to understand and communicate with people from different cultures. It provides people with a more cultural perspective to solve their problems (Improving Cultural Competence 2015). This project is about helping young people to develop their cultural competence and be able to communicate with people from different backgrounds. The background to this project is that London is a multicultural city and there are many opportunities to meet people from different places when living in London. However, living in a multicultural city does not always develop people’s cultural competence because they need to accept both cultures from their home country and host country. The perspective of this research is from an international student in London who are from China.
Methodology
The research methods are used in this project include literature review, qualitative and action research. Some background information and theory of this research are supported by books and journal articles. I also attend online sessions about cultural competence to get more information from experts. Furthermore, surveys and interviews with stakeholders and experts are used to collect data to develop the interventions.
My previous interventions were created to test how can boots people’s confidence and self-awareness in a cross-culture environment. After that, I made an online quiz based on the UAL language learning centre to test participators’ level and knowledge of cultural competence. In addition, I interviewed many experts who are online English teachers to know their knowledge and experience of cultural competence. Based on their feedback, I created my current intervention to test if the similarity between people can narrow the culture gap. It is a game about answering cultural questions such as “What’s your favourite breakfast?” “What birthday traditions do you have?” and players can find if they have similarities during the game.
Reflection and Analysis
At the beginning of this project, the range of my topic is big and it needs to be narrowed down. I contacted UAL Students’ Union and Language Centre to gain more information about cultural competence, but I did not get useful information from the Students’ Union and Language Centre. However, Language Centre provides online resources that I can learn some knowledge about intercultural communication. I also attended an online session about developing intercultural competence at The London School of International Communication. I found knowledge, skills and attitudes are three important elements in the process of developing cultural competence. I tried to help people gain more knowledge about culture in my research but then I failed. People can acquire cultural knowledge from books, online recourses and it is a huge area that will never end. What I learn from my research is that attitudes are more important. If people have attitudes about cultural competence, they have the power to learn the knowledge.
Then I focused my research on people’s attitudes. And I got some useful feedback from my experts who are culturally competent online English teachers. What I learn from them is that cross-cultural communication is not a big issue as people think. It is important to think everyone is the same. This feedback inspired me because I always try to find cultural differences instead of similarities.
Conclusion
By doing the research so far, I found developing cultural competence is not as difficult as I thought if I focused my project on effect people’s attitudes. However, there are some challenges I have in this research project because I need to gather stakeholders from different cultural backgrounds to test my interventions. At the same time, I can learn how to work with different people during this research process. As my current intervention has not been finished, I will test it on more people soon afterwards and to see if it can improve my project.
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.
The expert talked about the understanding of cultural competence, greater cultural self-awareness, and some tips to communicate across cultures. Knowledge, skills and attitudes are three important areas reflect in cultural competence. People can acquire cultural knowledge from books, online recourses but knowledge is a huge area that will never end. She suggested people who want to develop cultural competence pick their relevant culture and acquire more knowledge.
The London School of International Communication also provides an online quiz to test intercultural competence. It includes two parts which are cultural knowledge and cross-cultural communication skills. By doing this quiz, I found I lack cultural knowledge of many countries such as Brazil, India and so on.
Reflecting on my project, last week I wanted to narrow down my research topic of cultural competence to share cultural experiences in London, but cultural competence is the ability to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds, not only learning British culture. So, I want to make my project focus on the cross-cultural communication skills part of cultural competence.
I made a quiz based on the activities from the UAL language centre and I got 9 results. Most of them have knowledge about cultural competence but none of them got all correct in this quiz.
Flexible behaviour is one of the competencies that most of them are not familiar with because only one person chose the right answer.
The illustration of flexible behaviour is “Adapt your own way of doing things and communicating to suit different contexts and situations.”
However, not everyone has awareness of flexible behaviour when having intercultural communication.
This also happened when I had a conversation with my stakeholder who was learning Chinese.
I asked him “Do you cook at home in your spare time?” in Chinese.
And he answered “Yes. Where else could I cook?”
Then I realized the phrase “At home” misled him. “At home” can be deleted in this sentence but it’s a common way to say that in Chinese (I double-checked with my friends). I should not assume he will understand before I asked this question in my usual way.
At this stage, I am going to look at how “flexible behaviour” help people improve intercultural communication skills to achieve cultural competence. I will create an intervention about this.
By thinking about the difference between different cultural backgrounds, I tried to narrow down the topic and focus on the stakeholders who are living in London, UK. It’s easier for me to collect data and in London, we can meet people from different backgrounds so people always need cultural competence. The language part of this project can be only English.
My new research topic is: How can young people develop cultural competence in London?
However, I still need to consider what area of cultural competence I am going to focus such as language, embarrassment, traveling. I am going to do a SWOT analyse to narrow down my research topic.
Language Centre in UAL provides students and staff with intercultural and communication training. Their training sessions aim to develop people’s cultural awareness, language use, communication skills and teaching approaches.
Leaflet of Intercultural Training
Language Centre also provides online resources about intercultural communication.
