Cultural Diversity - Essay on Intercultural Learning and Competence

RUNNING HEAD: CULTURAL DIVERSITY
0
Cultural Diversity
Essay
System 003
[Pick the date]

Cultural Diversity 1
Reflective Journal
The aim of writing this journal is store my view, reflections and notes of this subject or
related topic and to analyze the experiences that I faced in my personal and professional life so
that all this can be relate to this subject and topic in practical situation. The information provided
in this journal is connected with the topic; however I decided to classify all the information using
headings.
Culture
I would like to center this reflection on my personal view about culture. Culture is the
sameness in the behavior of group or it encompasses of same characteristics that are language,
belief and religion. Different countries have different culture that is their own way of living,
attitude, values, norms and social group. I found this definition connected (Spencer-Oatey,
2008), defined culture as the set of assumptions to life, values, policies and belief that a group
shared and these characteristics of a group influence behavior of each individual. I remembered
the situation when I went to the USA for a tour it was very difficult for me to adapt the culture as
communication style of US people is different and Australian prefer to say direct and blunt to an
individual as I am used to speak abbreviated words in everything but in the US this is not at all
acceptable as they have their own culture and norms.
Considering that situation I realized that understanding and learning intercultural
competence is essential that helps in knowing their culture and human behavior. I would like to
explain about intercultural learning and competence that is how important is to learn the skills,
knowledge and cultural differences of a group or country. Intercultural learning is gaining the
knowledge about others cultures and values or to intentionally explore the cultural differences

Cultural Diversity 2
across the countries in order to increase the knowledge (Bennett, 2010). I experienced that if I
was aware about the cultural differences that Australia and the USA have then I would have
enjoyed more as there was the time I felt like I should know about their culture and values that
would help me in respecting their culture.
Hofstede Model
I would to elaborate the dimension of culture through Hofstede’s Framework. I found that
cultures of countries are more interconnected because of globalization. This model highlights the
six dimensions of the culture that are discussed below:
Figure 1: Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
Source: (Minkov & Hofstede, 2011)