Reflective Report: Analyzing Attitudes and Behaviors in Interactions

This report provides a reflective and critical analysis of the student's attitudes and behaviors in various interactions, particularly within an intercultural context. The report begins with an introduction outlining the importance of reflective writing and its role in analyzing experiences. The main body delves into the student's personal experiences, highlighting their observations of cultural differences between India and the UK, their adaptation to the UK environment, and their intercultural communication skills. The student discusses their strengths, such as effective communication, and weaknesses, like a lack of collaborative skills, and how they have attempted to improve them through social learning theory and other resources. The report concludes by emphasizing the value of reflective writing in personal and professional development, and the significance of intercultural skills in navigating international environments. The student also includes references to academic sources to support their analysis.

A reflective and critical
summary of my attitudes and
behaviours in my interactions

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
Reflective writing is acknowledged as the effective practices used by individuals to analyse
or go through from their overall experiences (Agboka, 2014). The present report will provide
detailed description on the individual attitude and behaviour which changes with the changing
environment. This will also provide a brief summary of learning experience of the individual that
is mainly developed with the interaction that is made by during my academic life.
MAIN BODY
On the basis of my own experience based on academic life and personal life experience it
can be said that I have developed my understanding on different areas. I am have attained by
graduate level degree from the recognised university of India. At the time of graduation, I was
very keen about my studies and was eager to explore ways through which my knowledge could
be enhanced. This basically gave me the idea about environment of external world in terms of
their climate, culture, people and attitude towards the new people (Bargiela-Chiappini and
Nickerson, 2014). I mainly felt influenced and attracted towards the environment of UK which
was quite open, friendly, well mannered, good listeners, controlled business environment, value
privacy, sophisticated and formal. While living in India, I observed that Indian community
discriminates among people in terms of gender which ultimately develops negative feeling for
the nation as well as its local community.
While comparing the overall environment of India with the UK, I personally realised that
UK is much more advanced and fair (non-discriminating) country. This directly influenced my
personal interest to approach this nation for starting my master’s degree in this nation. Here, I
found that people of UK are good listeners who mainly listen to every individual in order to
understand their perspectives and circumstance (Elo, Benjowsky and Nummela, 2015). The local
people in the respective nation prefer to follow the basic etiquettes at every social event so that
other people could give them respect. Overall, I was attracted to the positive environment of UK.
While emphasising on my own intercultural business communication skill, it has been
analysed that I adapted to the environment of UK in effective manner. In order to sustain longer
in UK, I need to develop my attitude and behaviour according to the national culture. This
provided assistance to me in setting interaction with people belonging to this nation. This
directly helped me in surviving in the UK environment without facing many issues in terms of its
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culture and values (Lockwood, 2015). On the basis of findings developed from my own
reflective journal and questionnaire I got to know that my own intercultural skills are quite
strong. This can be said on the basis of the situation whereby, while taking admission in UK’s
University, I was able to communicate with new people in terms of sharing my basic information
with them. Also, I was comfortable with the culture of UK as I had read about it during
graduation. This developed my knowledge upon its national culture and prepared for the
expected behaviour of its local people. As a result, I was very comfortable with the country’s
culture. I made new friends in UK in the starting days of my admission only.
The overall analysis of my own intercultural skill was good but at the same time I found
few ineffective areas whereby there was a scope of improvement. My weak area was lack of
corporation with team members during group studies and group activities as I was habitual with
the Indian environment whereby I mainly focussed over my own working rather than
collaborative working. At the time of cooperating with team members of UK, it became barrier
for me as I had to communicate with each team member and then align my work with them.
While communicating with the British classmates, I encountered issues owing to their different
accent which sometimes hindered me from effectively comprehending what they meant to say.
This at times led to confusion and miscommunication during the study (Malyuga and Orlova,
2017).
In order to improve my weak areas I mainly adopted social learning theory which helped
me in developing my knowledge over the surrounding area. According to this theory,
observation directly allows individual in checking out that what mistakes other are making in the
same situation so that they themselves not do the same (Martin and Nakayama, 2015). The usage
of this theory supported me in acquiring accent of British English by observing people in my
surrounding. The theory also developed my knowledge upon the culture of UK thereby
enhancing my attitude and behaviour during my interactions.
In order to develop my attitudes and behaviour in interaction, it was essential for me to
develop my understanding over the different cultural values (Neuliep, 2016). For this, I made use
of online sources like books, journals, online article which assisted me in developing my
knowledge over British culture. Overall, I believed that having positive behaviour towards others
especially while living in foreign country is quite important as it helps in making effective
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relations with people in that nation. As a result, I could succeed in accomplishing my motive for
which I moved to UK.
CONCLUSION
Reflective writing is helpful for every individual to develop their understanding of their own
core strength and core weak skill. As a result, with the support of this individuals can easily
develop their identified core weak skills. This could be effectively done with the support of
effective training sessions that will contribute in the development of these weak areas. Along
with this, it is also important for individuals to have intercultural skills so that they can survive at
international countries for longer period of time. Effective command intercultural skills makes it
easier for individual to communicate with others belonging from different culture. Moreover, it
is also important for individuals to develop their skills time to time so that they can enhance
chances of growth as well as success for longer period of time. Also, it is important for them
adopt soft attitude and behaviour while communicating with others in order to share strong
relationship with them.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journal
Agboka, G. Y., 2014. Decolonial methodologies: Social justice perspectives in intercultural
technical communication research. Journal of Technical Writing and
Communication. 44(3). pp.297-327.
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Nickerson, C. R., 2014. Writing business: Genres, media and
discourses. Routledge.
Elo, M., Benjowsky, C. and Nummela, N., 2015. Intercultural competences and interaction
schemes—Four forces regulating dyadic encounters in international business. Industrial
Marketing Management. 48. pp.38-49.
Lockwood, J., 2015. Virtual team management: what is causing communication
breakdown?. Language and Intercultural Communication. 15(1). pp.125-140.
Malyuga, E. N. and Orlova, S. N., 2017. Linguistic pragmatics of intercultural professional and
business communication. Springer.
Martin, J. N. and Nakayama, T. K., 2015. Reconsidering intercultural (communication)
competence in the workplace: A dialectical approach. Language and Intercultural
Communication. 15(1). pp.13-28.
Neuliep, J. W., 2016. Intercultural communication: A contextual approach. Sage Publications.
Nickerson, C., 2015. The death of the non-native speaker? English as a lingua franca in business
communication: A research agenda. Language Teaching. 48(3). pp.390-404.
Palmer-Silveira, J. C., 2015. Multimodality in Business Communication. Multimodal analysis in
academic settings: From research to teaching, pp.171-192.
Piller, I., 2017. Intercultural communication: A critical introduction. Edinburgh University
Press.
Thomas, D. C., 2015. Cultural intelligence. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, pp.1-3.
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