Cross Cultural Communication

Running head: CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Cross Cultural Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Efficient cross cultural communication is essential for the well-being and well-
functioning of the societies and a basic understanding of the cultural diversity is the key to
effective cross cultural communications (Bird & Mendenhall, 2016). The charge of effective
cross cultural communication is to produce some guidelines by means of which people from
diverse cultures could communicate with one another in better way. This briefing paper is
going to present some detailed analysis of the education system of Singapore so that the
secondary school teachers from Germany who are going to spend 3 months in Singapore
working in their primary schools could get an idea about the culture and the education system
of theirs in order to contribute their best.
The Singaporean Education system is aimed towards the excellence for the students
and it gives great flexibility and importance to effective communication, perseverance,
building relationships and time management (Zahari et al., 2018). It has always been a
significant focus of the world-wide interest and attention in past few years. On the other
hand, Germany is a quite big country and there is a fierce competition among the students
there. Since centuries Germany was a key centre for education and comprised of several
famous colleges and universities. The secondary education system of Singapore is different
from what the German teachers see in Germany. A brief analysis of the secondary education
system of Singapore is presented below:
Language Spoken- It is to note that Singapore has a bilingual education policy and
there all the students studying in the government schools are taught English as their first
language. Therefore, it would not be that tough for the German teachers who have good
fluency in English to interact with the students and teachers there. However, languages like
Tamil, Mandarin and Malay are also taught in the schools as second language by the MOE
and are the commonly spoken language there (Chew, 2017). Hence, in order to interact with
the rest other common public, teachers from Germany need to be have fluency in this

2CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
language as well. With the same, for the international students, third language are also
offered and they include German, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese and French.
Communication Style- The way in which cultures communicate differs greatly and at
the same time, they are either low-context or high-context communicators. According to Yeo
and Pang (2017), Singapore is a high-context culture and the message delivered here is
mostly indirect and it would be the job the German teachers to figure out and identify what
they are trying to tell them. It is to mention that a large part of the meaning of the Asian
words or Asian communication is coded in their non-verbal cues, silence and contact etc. and
with the same, they leave it up to the other people in order to read between their lines. The
German teachers coming from Germany, where direct communication is highly rewarded and
valued, there people directly say what they mean and mean what they say (Chan, 2017). As
quality and precision are greatly regarded in Germany, it makes sense that the culture of
Germany wants to avoid any sort of misunderstandings among themselves. However, in the
case of Singapore, this often comes across as confrontational, crude, rude and blunt for most
of the Singaporeans or Asians.
It is also to note that as claimed by Bird and Mendenhall (2016) Singapore is a diverse
nation and it is ethic mixed. As stated, English, Malay, Tamil and Mandarin Chinese are the
four commonly spoken languages. Most of the schools in Singapore run the curriculum in
English language and therefore, the English level are highly good in Singapore and most of
the common people are fluent in this language (Curdt-Christiansen, 2016). Notwithstanding
this fact, mutual comprehension and good communication often need more than just a
common language and there can be several misunderstandings flowing because of diverse
concepts of the proper and improper use of language. Furthermore, in most of the Asian
cultures, “no” is a difficult word. It is equal to disagreement and can influence the harmony