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Different Cultures Cause Miscommunication

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HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
....................

CROSS- CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Instructor : NGUYEN BACH NGA
Group : 8
Student : HO VAN KET
Class : ANHSPK10D
Student code : 13F7011114 ******* Hue, 2016 *******
TOPIC FOR END-OF-COURSE ASSIGNMENT
CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

When people from different cultures communicate, misunderstandings can happen. What are the possible reasons for those misunderstandings and what should people do in order to avoid them and prevent them from turning into cultural conflicts?
Please limit your answer to no more than 1200 words.

Misunderstanding is a communication phenomenon that we often experience in our life. Especially, when we communicate with people from different cultures, the misunderstanding is inevitable. In my opinion, the main reasons for case is owing to language differences, different verbal communication styles and non-verbal misinterpretation. The important thing here is what will we have to do in order to avoid misunderstanding, does not let it results in cultural conflicts. The first reason of misunderstanding is language differences which the most common communication barriers which cause misunderstandings and misinterpretations between people. The fact is that in the world there are many countries and many different languages. So when two people that use two own language to communicate, the communication will not be effective, even it leads to misunderstand what speaker means. For example, a Canadian goes to visit a Cotu ethnic minority group in Thua Thien Hue, Vietnam. When he opened his mouth to greet "How do you do". People in village heard this, they were very angry with him. Because of 'how' in Cotu's language means way to do something and 'do' by their understanding way is obscene word of Vietnamese.

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