Communication Skills: A Challenging Process for Cross-Cultural Students

The paper discusses the challenges faced by cross-cultural students in communication skills and how to overcome them. It highlights the difficulties faced by the author in communicating with people from different cultures and the action plan adopted to overcome the communication gap. The paper also suggests various approaches to enhance communication skills.

Reflective journal
0 | P a g e

The paper will evaluate different facts regarding why the communication skills is
considered as being one of the difficult processes especially for people from different
cultures. As I belong to a different country which means a different culture, language,
and a different living style therefore, I have faced communication problems during the
first year of my college in Dublin. Due to this problem, I was unable to make new friends
in the class and the other reason is that I was a really shy person. There were few of the
crucial issues related to my communication, such as lack of confidence and
nervousness. One of the issues was that I felt nervous whenever I pronounced a wrong
word to someone. Moreover, making newer friends from different culture was a difficult
task to me. I was looking to escape from my communicational issues but in order to
continue my studies it was necessary to communicate with other students and
professors.
"Communication is a difficult skill? Why?" because I have faced problems while
communicating with different people. The communication problem arises when I first
came to Dublin from Kuwait to continue my study in Dublin business school. There was
a bit difficulty while communicating with people because in every country there is
different phrases and slang words that they use, different greetings etc. But as I have
completed my schooling in an American private school where English was my second
language since I was a child, therefore this helped me a lot with studying abroad made
it much easier for me to communicate. According to me I know English but not very well
as compared to the Dublin people of course, so I was not communicating that much with
my classmates in first year because I was always nervous if I spelled a word incorrectly
while communicating. It was a life-changing approach for the people that are from a
different country as well as a different culture, that is hard for them to communicate with
other people of different countries, cultures (Morreale et al., 2017). Hence this problem
was faced by me in my first year of college. The culture of Dublin is different from
Kuwait and their greetings are a bit different. (Young, and Schartner, 2014). There are
different approaches used by various people for enahncing the overall process of
communication. Some of the forms of communication process are face-to-face
communication, written form of communication and communicating with the help of
gestures. My most of the fear was related with the face-to-face communicational
1 | P a g e

approach. I can communicate easily with people in the form of written communication
but I was facing huge amount difficulty in speaking directly to them in English.
Due to their cultural differences, their communication style is different, and this is the
main reason for a person’s hesitation in order to communicate properly with the people
from other countries (Teunissen et al., 2017). I feel that the communication in
presentation’s is my greatest fear and this has occurred because of my hesitation and
also for my nervousness. In addition, I think the symbolic interaction theory of
communication will help me a lot to increase my communication level in the future. The
theory states people interact with an individual belonging to different culture by the use
of meaningful symbols. Hence by this symbolic approach, my fear of saying the wrong
word will decrease a lot, and also it will increase my interaction with the students from
different cultures. Besides this, it will enhance my confidence to interact with them
without any hesitation. In addition, the author De Mooij, (2015) suggests that it become
difficult for a person to easily communicate with another person that belongs to a
different country with a different cultural aspect. Intercultural communication is a difficult
approach, and most of the people hesitate to make good communication skill with
others (Zhang, and Leung, 2015). They feel shy, and lack of confidence does not allow
them to speak fluently with the people belonging to a different culture (Kang et al.,
2016). This situation has occurred on the first year of my college in Dublin which
suggests that communication is one of rigorous approach for a person belonging to a
different culture. On the other hand, it is a matter of fact that communicating with people
from diverse culture creates lots of confusion to understand the things properly.
Moreover, practicing proper communication process with the help of a tutor of a friend
helps in minimizing the communicational issues to a great extent.
As my years pass in Dublin I’m feeling its becoming easier for me to communicate
studying abroad really helped me with being more of a confident speaker. The
experience of the communication gap helps a person to improve the communication
approach so that hesitation, as well as nervousness, will reduce easily in future (Palmer
et al., 2016). Though the experience was not easy for me in the beginning, I came to
know my problems related to communication approach and after identifying them, I can
2 | P a g e

easily work on it to overcome my weaknesses. Furthermore, I was looking to practice
the use of speaking English at my room in front of the mirror. There were few of the
classmates which were really helpful and supportive. They encouraged me in speaking
English to them without having any fear and they were correcting my communication
process too by their own ability and skills. It is a matter of fact that each words in
English has its own different meaning which are used at difference places and this also
increased the difficulty for me at some instances. Therefore it can be said that
communication is one of the difficult approaches because without proper interaction it
becomes very difficult for the cross-cultural student to communicate easily with other
people (Kälin, 2017). Thus for diminishing this communication issue, I made an action
plan to decrease my nervousness while interacting with people all around the world. I
have made a decision to myself where it is ok to spell a word wrong while presenting or
talking, no one’s perfect I just need to relax and speak and put effort in my work and try
my best to show my learning and communicating skills, as anxiety won’t get me to a
point where I can show my capabilities. I can easily enhance my communication skill.
Hence by this action plan, I can easily overcome my hesitation, and I will be more fluent
in English language. One of friend at the institute suggested me to speak English in
front of him without having fear and without caring for grammatical mistakes so that he
can correct me easily by evaluating my mistakes. This approach also helped me in
decreasing the communication issue for me. Different people having different ways to
practice and enhance their way of communicating with people coming from diverse
culture.
Communication is considered to be one of the difficult skills and without proper
communication, it creates various issues for people to understand other feelings and
thoughts. I have understood the fact that in order to communicate with people coming
from diverse culture, the use of proper communication method is vital. Proper
communicational techniques will help in evaluating the effectiveness while
communicating with people in a well-defined manner.
3 | P a g e

References
De Mooij, M., 2015. Cross-cultural research in international marketing: clearing up some
of the confusion. International Marketing Review, 32(6), pp.646-662.
Kälin, W., 2017. Troubled communication: Cross-cultural misunderstandings in the
asylum-hearing. In International Refugee Law (pp. 175-186). Routledge.
Kang, R., Dabbish, L., & Sutton, K. (2016, February). Strangers on your phone: Why
people use anonymous communication applications. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM
Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 359-
370). ACM.
Merkin, R., Taras, V. and Steel, P., 2014. State of the art themes in cross-cultural
communication research: A systematic and meta-analytic review. International Journal
of Intercultural Relations, 38, pp.1-23.
Morreale, S.P., Valenzano, J.M. and Bauer, J.A., 2017. Why communication education
is important: A third study on the centrality of the discipline’s content and
pedagogy. Communication Education, 66(4), pp.402-422.
Palmer, A.D., Newsom, J.T. and Rook, K.S., 2016. How does difficulty communicating
affect the social relationships of older adults? An exploration using data from a national
survey. Journal of communication disorders, 62, pp.131-146.
Stahl, G.K. and Tung, R.L., 2015. Towards a more balanced treatment of culture in
international business studies: The need for the positive cross-cultural scholarship.
Journal of International Business Studies, 46(4), pp.391-414.
Teunissen, E., Gravenhorst, K., Dowrick, C., van Weel-Baumgarten, E., Van den
Driessen Mareeuw, F., de Brún, T., Burns, N., Lionis, C., Mair, F.S., O’Donnell, C. and
O’Reilly-de Brún, M., 2017. Implementing guidelines and training initiatives to improve
cross-cultural communication in primary care consultations: a qualitative participatory
European study. International journal for equity in health, 16(1), p.32.
4 | P a g e

Young, T.J. and Schartner, A., 2014. The effects of cross-cultural communication
education on international students' adjustment and adaptation. Journal of Multilingual
and Multicultural Development, 35(6), pp.547-562.
Zhang, Y. and Leung, L., 2015. A review of social networking service (SNS) research in
communication journals from 2006 to 2011. New Media & Society, 17(7), pp.1007-1024.
5 | P a g e