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    Educ-F 203 Final Paper

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    This paper discusses the key concepts the author learned in an intercultural communication class called Dancing with Discomfort. The concepts were openness, listening for understanding, and recognizing the single story. Regarding openness, the author realized they needed to be more open to different cultural perspectives and avoid making assumptions. For listening for understanding, the author worked on listening without comparing to their own experiences. Finally, the author learned about the single story from a Ted Talk, and how it's important to avoid generalizing entire groups based on a single narrative. These concepts have helped the author grow in appreciating cultural differences.

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    Educ-F 203 Final Paper

    Uploaded by

    api-531971948
    71 views4 pages
    This paper discusses the key concepts the author learned in an intercultural communication class called Dancing with Discomfort. The concepts were openness, listening for understanding, and recognizing the single story. Regarding openness, the author realized they needed to be more open to different cultural perspectives and avoid making assumptions. For listening for understanding, the author worked on listening without comparing to their own experiences. Finally, the author learned about the single story from a Ted Talk, and how it's important to avoid generalizing entire groups based on a single narrative. These concepts have helped the author grow in appreciating cultural differences.

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    This paper discusses the key concepts the author learned in an intercultural communication class called Dancing with Discomfort. The concepts were openness, listening for understanding, and recognizing the single story. Regarding openness, the author realized they needed to be more open to different cultural perspectives and avoid making assumptions. For listening for understanding, the author worked on listening without comparing to their own experiences. Finally, the author learned about the single story from a Ted Talk, and how it's important to avoid generalizing entire groups based on a single narrative. These concepts have helped the author grow in appreciating cultural differences.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    71 views4 pages

    Educ-F 203 Final Paper

    Uploaded by

    api-531971948
    This paper discusses the key concepts the author learned in an intercultural communication class called Dancing with Discomfort. The concepts were openness, listening for understanding, and recognizing the single story. Regarding openness, the author realized they needed to be more open to different cultural perspectives and avoid making assumptions. For listening for understanding, the author worked on listening without comparing to their own experiences. Finally, the author learned about the single story from a Ted Talk, and how it's important to avoid generalizing entire groups based on a single narrative. These concepts have helped the author grow in appreciating cultural differences.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 4

    Zach Belcaster

    Professors Katie Cierniak and ​Laura Stachowski

    EDUC-F 203

    7 February 2021

    Dancing with Discomfort Final Paper

    Throughout my time in Dancing with Discomfort, I feel that my understanding of

    intercultural communication has grown from a space where I didn’t even recognize the term to

    where I am now very conscious of my actions and my abilities and inabilities to communicate

    with others. This class was one that launched me on my journey of competent intercultural

    communication. There were three very distinct concepts that I felt helped me get a leg up on this

    journey and that I feel will help me far into the future. These concepts are openness, listening for

    understanding, and the single-story.

    Regarding openness, I’d like to believe that before this class I was open to new ideas and

    concepts. At the same time, however, I understand that I wasn’t as open as I believe I was. It is

    always easy to say, looking back, that you would have done something differently, had you just

    known what the circumstances were or if you knew something more. I’m sure there are many

    times where we all think back on something and think this same thing. In this case, I think it is

    my openness that has evolved. Before this class, I didn’t really think about projecting my ideas

    of what is right and what is wrong onto a culture that I am learning about or about a person that I

    am learning more about. There were times where I just wouldn’t understand what was

    happening and just write it off as something I could ignore or something stupid. Even writing

    this now, I am a bit disgusted on how I acted back then, but I am glad that this class has forced

    me to grow positively. An example of how a situation like this might have gone comes from
    Lurie’s ​A Mind Opening Journey Across Cultures​, where some Kenyan students were viewed as

    being rude for not saying “please” or “thank you” (Lurie, 9). In the past, I would have definitely

    thought that they might have been being rude, but that is no longer the case. After this class, I

    have to think more actively about the assumptions I am making about others and how I am

    viewing them. Where I would have originally thought that something was strange because it was

    different, I now know that it isn’t really strange but it is different. In the case of the Kenyan

    students, my initial reaction might still be the same. But later, I would definitely think about

    what had happened and would come to the realization that it might just be a difference in

    cultures. And that is okay. We cannot all be perfect representations of intercultural

    communications and understanding, but as long as we continue to work on it and develop our

    intercultural selves, then we are still growing as people in a positive way. This concept also

    bleeds into my next point, listening for understanding.

    I have never been one who was just able to listen to a story without thinking about it in

    terms of my own experiences. Even now, I still sometimes struggle with it, but I am still

    working on listening for understanding. When I first started taking this course, it was the first

    time that I realized what I was doing and how it was wrong. Trying to just sit and listen without

    thinking or putting my thoughts into the story and experiences was a lot harder than I anticipated

    it being. Sharing my stories with people is how I empathize, or at least try to empathize, with

    people. It was extremely hard at first to just sit and listen for understanding rather than listen to

    form a response. But once I understood just how important skill this skill was, I sat myself down

    and told myself that I was going to do it. And I don’t regret doing it and forcing myself to learn

    to listen in a way that wasn’t natural for me to do. There have been a couple of times outside of

    this class where listening for understanding has really helped me just sit and listen to someone
    tell a story about themselves or an experience that they’ve had, and just appreciate it for what it

    was without me trying to tell a story in return. This has really helped me listen to stories without

    putting my thoughts into the narrative.

    Finally, on the topic of stories, the single-story might be one of, if not, the most important

    things I have learned about and evolved over this course. Until I watched Chimamanda Ngozi

    Adichie’s TED talk about the significance of the single-story, I didn’t really understand what it

    was or why it was so important. The single-story is a single narrative, often from an outside

    culture, that pervades all other narratives, even those that come from inside the culture itself. As

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie puts it, “It robs people of their dignity” (13:57-14:00, Adichie).

    Something I recently realized is that this doesn’t only pertain to different cultures, such as

    Americans and Japanese as an example, but also pertains to intranational cultures, such as the

    East Coast versus Midwesterners. We were talking about the difference in communication

    between people in the Midwest and other parts of the country, and one student said that “[They]

    were shocked by the passive aggressiveness of [Midwesterners].” They had always heard how

    hospitable and how kind people were from the Midwest, which is something that might be true

    for some people but doesn’t show the whole story.


    Works Cited

    Lurie, Joe. ​Perception and Deception: a Mind Opening Journey across Cultures​. Cultural

    Detective, 2018.

    TED. “The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” ​YouTube​, presented by

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 7 Oct. 2009, ​https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg​.

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