Evaluating Intercultural Communication (Blog Post #4)

In this week’s post, I would like to share with you an incident which involved my uncle back in my hometown in Malaysia. Before I proceed to my story, allow me to share with you some details about my uncle. My uncle’s name is Theodore and I always call him Uncle Ted. He is an American who has just married with my aunt not long ago. After their marriage, he decided to move and settle in Ipoh with my aunt although he has not been to Malaysia prior to this. As such, he has very little knowledge regarding the multiracial and multicultural society of this foreign land.

This scenario occurred a month ago in a hawker centre located in my hometown, Ipoh. One morning, Uncle Ted wanted to order a plate of his favourite local cuisine, nasi lemak, from a Malay stall. As he could not speak Malay and the Malay lady had a poor command of English, he pointed to the word ‘nasi lemak’ in the menu as a way to place his order. Then, he made a hand gesture of touching his thumb and index finger together while holding the rest of his fingers straight up as a signal to ask the seller if she had gotten his order. The Malay lady nodded and repeated the hand gesture made by my uncle as an indication that she had understood his message.

Five minutes later, the Malay lady came to Uncle Ted’s table to serve the nasi lemak. To his surprise, she placed 3 plates of nasi lemak on the table instead of one. By using simple English, Uncle Ted tried his best to explain that he had just ordered one plate of nasi lemak and ask her to take the extra 2 plates away. The Malay lady got agitated and refused to take the extra 2 plates away. She insisted that he had ordered 3 plates and kept doing the hand gesture made by him earlier as a confirmation that he had ordered 3 plates of nasi lemak just now. In order to get out from this unpleasant situation, Uncle Ted apologized to the Malay lady and paid for the 3 plates of nasi lemak.

Language barrier was the main cause of this miscommunication between Uncle Ted and the Malay lady. Uncle Ted’s inability to speak in Malay and the Malay lady’s poor command in English had caused him to use non-verbal language as a mean to convey his message. However, little did he know that different cultures have different meanings for the same body language. For the locals in Malaysia, the hand gesture of touching the thumb and index finger together while holding the rest of the fingers straight up is referring to the number three. On the other hand, this hand gesture is used as an indication of ‘okay’ or ‘alright’ by most people in the West. As such, Uncle Ted’s initial intention of asking the Malay lady whether she had understood his order turned out to be another meaning to her, resulting in miscommunication and misunderstanding between them. As such, it is very important for us to acquire some knowledge about the various cultures especially in a multiracial country in order to avoid such situations in the future.

Business Correspondence Critique (Post 3)

For this week’s blog, all the ES2007S students are required to post an email or a business letter which we wish to critique on. As such, the following is an email which I have selected for this week’s assignment:

Hey people,

Let me introduce myself briefly. I am Y, the new sectional leader for Chinese calligraphy society. I really appreciate the hard work the previous committee has put into in the exhilarating activities. For that, I believe that they all deserve a round of applause, don't they? Most important of all, it is YOU, our dear members that has supported and encouraged them through your participation; YOU have made all the committee members' work worthwhile and meaningful. Therefore, THANK YOU.

In this new term, I hope that you would continue to support the new batch of committee members and we, in turn, will provide the best that we can to serve you. After all, that is our committee's motto, "Everything is for YOU."

I am writing to you for another reason. There are a few vacancies for committee members. They include:
1 Secretary
2 Logistic Members
2 Marketing members

There will be an interview session for interested applicants.

I urge you to take up these posts. Join us in this year's journey, to learn and to serve together. And I am always there for you.

I am looking forward to seeing you soon.


Y

This was an email that I received one semester ago regarding the recruitment of members for particular positions in the Chinese Calligraphy Society. After reading it, I noticed that there were several mistakes that could have been corrected, making it a better piece of writing. One of the mistakes that I first noticed was the lack of courtesy in this email. The writer should have addressed his/her recipients as ‘Dear fellow members’ instead of ‘Hey people’. The choice of words used by the writer was rather informal and might have caused a feeling of disrespect to the recipients.

Besides that, there was lack of correctness in the terms of the language used such as punctuation and grammar especially in paragraph one. One of the examples which reflected my point of view was in this sentence- ‘I really appreciate the hard work the previous committee has put into in the exhilarating activities.’ The writer should have used ‘had put’ instead of ‘has put’ because the previous committee members had already retired from their positions and the contributions that they made were in the past.

Furthermore, some sentences in this email were rather verbose and lacked of conciseness (i.e. the first paragraph). It was written in a rather lengthy manner and the punctuations used were not correct. As such, I would suggest that the first paragraph of the email should be corrected to the following:

“I am Y, the new sectional leader for the Chinese Calligraphy Society. I wish to express my gratitude for the hard work of the previous committee members in organizing various activities. I would also like to thank everyone who has given us the support and encouragement through your participation in our activities.”

Some inconsistencies in terms of tenses could also be found such as in the first sentence of paragraph two. The writer should have written the sentence in simple future tense. As such, the corrected sentence should be ‘In this new term, I hope that you will continue to support the new batch of committee members and we, in turn, will provide the best that we can to serve you.’

Another mistake found in this email was the incompleteness of the information given. As the purpose of this email was to recruit new committee members, the writer should have included more details regarding the interview (e.g. date, time, venue, etc.), the deadline of the application, the particulars which the applicants need to provide in their applications and to whom the applications should be sent to. Without all these information, doubt and confusion might have occurred among the readers as they do not know what they should do if they wish to apply for those positions.

In conclusion, revising, editing and proofreading are the three essential steps that one should not miss when it comes to writing, be it a business letter or an email. Hence, we should take note and spare some time to read and re-read our writing before it is published or being sent out.