University Course: Evaluation and Reflection on Communication Skills

This assignment is a reflective paper by a student, evaluating their experiences and learning in a course focused on cross-cultural communication. The student discusses their personal growth, highlighting strengths like quick learning and weaknesses such as nervousness and impatience. The reflection covers the student's interactions with diverse cultures, the insights gained regarding differences in thoughts, ideas, and religious practices, and the strategies they plan to adopt, like using a translator, to improve communication. The student emphasizes the importance of intercultural competence for their future career as a manager, including handling multicultural clients and promoting cultural sensitivity among coworkers. The paper concludes with plans to address cultural biases in their community and promote the benefits of cross-cultural interaction through volunteer work and community classes. The assignment references course materials and tools used to enhance their understanding of intercultural communication.

Running head: EVALUATION AND REFLECTION
Evaluation and Reflection
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

2EVALUATION AND REFLECTION
I am really happy after doing this assignment as I came to know several important aspects
of cross-cultural communication. I have learned that there are two sets of people in my culture
like every other culture around the world. Some are the age-old orthodox people who do not
really understand the importance of communicating with people from other cultures. On the
other hand, there are also many other people like us who are trying to come up with many new
and innovative ideas.
As a part of this project, I got the opportunity of communicating and interacting with
people belongs to several other cultures. I felt that one of my greatest strength was being a quick
learner. I have an undying quest for learning new things. So interacting with people belonging
from totally new and a different cultural background really helped me to gain new insight about
the world. I came to know about the difference between thoughts, ideas, religious practices, and
languages and also many other such parameters that exist between people. However, I also
realized some of my weaknesses as well.
I was at times becoming nervous and was not sure about my speech. I had this fear that
perhaps I will be saying something incorrect (maybe knowingly or unknowable) which might
hurt the sentiments and the emotions of people belonging from other culture and religious
backgrounds. The other problem I was facing was a lack of patience. As this entire project was
really very new for me, I felt that I was becoming very restless.
It was in the later part of my assignment that I realized this can have a negative impact on
my current and future career as well. This is because I will have to deal with many different
people after stepping into my professional career. I need to be patient and deal with all of them in
a calm and organized manner. I have decided to take the help of a translator in the initial days

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that would help me to understand the language and the cultures of the people belonging from
other cultural backgrounds.
I will use this knowledge in all the ways possible. I will definitely make a positive use of
the acquired knowledge. As per my perception, this knowledge will be helping me in my
professional life. In order to be a successful manager or a leader I have to handle, many clients
and customers of multicultural backgrounds. As a result of this knowledge, it will be a bit easier
for me to handle these matters patiently. I will make sure that none of my teammates or my co-
workers are becoming the victims of cultural biases. I will also arrange for many cross-cultural
communication sessions so that I can make my co-workers culturally competent. They will be
able to respect and help each other irrespective of their cultural backgrounds.
This knowledge will also help me in dealing with the cultural biases existing in our
community. I will try to join some NGO and conduct free classes so that people can be made
aware of the benefits of mixing with people of other culture. This is not a negative thing; rather
cross-cultural interaction can be used as a great source of innovation and ideas.

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References
Kinloch, P., & Metge, J. (2014). Talking past each other: problems of cross cultural
communication. Victoria University Press.
Mead, R., & Jones, C. J. (2017). Cross‐Cultural Communication. The Blackwell Handbook of
Cross‐Cultural Management, 283-291.
Purnell, L. (2018). Cross Cultural Communication: Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication,
Interpretation and Translation. In Global Applications of Culturally Competent Health
Care: Guidelines for Practice (pp. 131-142). Springer, Cham.
Teunissen, E., Gravenhorst, K., Dowrick, C., van Weel-Baumgarten, E., Van den Driessen
Mareeuw, F., de Brún, T., ... & 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), 32.