ESL21B #1383

Essay 1.2, Topic #2

07/03/2007

Diversity of Culture

    Since we see the light of the lifeAwkward being a member of society, we are all belongingVTense together. The smallest unit is a family; on the other hand, the biggest unit is a country. We learn different ways of living from those groups and the ways are accepted by us, actually the ways are absorbedAwkward. There would be many personalities which can not be counted, however we can find the common values when we look at them by culture to culture. From my experiences, I found out that there are many different values between the U.S.A. and the Korea that can be divided byWChoice nonverbal values, verbal values and so on.

    The value that shows KoreanSing/Plu have a sense of inferiority is the polite expressions. As we have them, we behave politely also. Moreover, the Korean lettersWChoice have a lot of levels of politeness. Therefore, having the morality is very required to whoWChoice wants to visit Korea. In the case of that you see{1} strange persons, for example, you have to make yourself silent not looking at themParallel. If you do, they might think you give offense to them and you ignore them. In this case, being quiet is the politenessWForm. They are having their time thinking and arranging themselves so it will be weird to American who always smiles contacting eyes; however that is the way how Korean think about politeness is and it can often jump to mistaken results when dealing with people who come from Korea as stated by Lisa Davis in the article "Where Do We Stand?."{2}

    Verbally, there are a lot of pitfalls of learning Korean communication styles, nevertheless there is the most different way is to say how the persons feeling areAwkward. For instance, when an American person is sick, he or she says how his/her feeling bad is emotionally, clearly and explicitly. However in Korea, we hide our feeling and keep acting politely. For more specific example, suppose that there are a Korean and an American. They both feel hungry during their conversation. The Korean would endure not to cut the conversation withoutPreposition telling itReference not clear. However, the American would ask if the Korean wants to go to have a meal or not. In that case, if the American had some foodsCount/Non-Count so he or she asked to the Korean, the Korean would refuse even though he/she wanted to have. Koreans intend to hide their feeling because they think showing it directly is rude. {***}ChoppyHowever, KoreanWForm is not only the country where has the specified cultural value but also many Asia countries. According to the reading "Polite but Thirsty," the author, Yaping Tang states that Chinese always say "No" for the courtesy.

    One more thing the foreigner should realize is the conception of time{3}. Korean is very strict for time so they want to finish their task as soon as possible. It is because Korean thinks if they finish the works quickly, there would be an efficient time to do other things. Therefore, actually, many foreigners learn the word "Bbali Bbali" at first when they get to the Korea which means "Quickly Quickly" in Korean. This is a lot different from Americans who spends their spare time usefully to feel achievement doing something rather than not doing it as mentioned by Gary Althen in the article "American Values and Assumptions". However, Koreans plan their schedule and try to finish the works quickly without having any spare times between them. Foreigners need to understand Korean do not like waiting someone and something.

    In conclusion, there are many different values between any cultures. There would be no wonder that understanding each culture because we live in a variety of country that we have different ways of living, ways of thinking, ways of accepting and so on.