Literacy, Culture, and Group Harmony - Essay Example

HERE YOUR HERE HERE HERE Literacy, Culture, and Group Harmony Cultural literacy is an important theme in life, especially when working with people from diverse cultures that have very different values and languages. In the Middle East, as one example, the culture is very collectivist where the needs of the group are usually most important. In opposite accord, the United States maintains a very individualistic culture where people want to be recognized for their own individual accomplishments and achievements. People from the U.S. who are forced to work professionally with people from other continents must have a new type of literacy in order to make these relationships successful and productive. Even if a person is not fluent in the foreign language used by those they are working with, they must have literacy in cultural symbols in order to understand what is being expressed. My personal experience with literacy involves working with diverse individuals from countries in the Middle East in a business context. During the course of our experience together, people were grouped together in order to problem solve and role play scenarios as they might occur in an academic and/or business environment. Some of the individuals in my group had English as their second language and were not very fluent and tended to grow frustrated while they were trying to communicate effectively. Especially when the elements of the group were involving role play exercises, they did not seem to be very productive and it impacted the quality of the group and its intentions. People who come from collectivist countries tend to look out for group needs and respect concepts, culturally, such as identifying with the family structure, ritual and tradition (Blodgett, Bakir & Rose, 339). These are social processes that often change people’s personality and behaviors and make it difficult for them to work well with others, especially when there are disagreements. Added to this is the problem of having a poor grasp on English literacy that can create many misunderstandings. During one role-play exercise, I was brainstorming ideas about how to handle a problem at a workplace that involved theft from low-level employees. My role was a manager and the foreign individual was a senior manager with authority over me. Together, we were to come up with a solution on how to handle the problem and stop theft since it was becoming a cost issue. While the foreign person from Saudi Arabia was attempting to communicate effectively, the group continued to laugh at her because of her poor English literacy. She did not take well to this at all since she came from a collectivist culture where group needs are usually taken seriously first and foremost. Those that were laughing at her were from the United States and spoke English fluently. During the first break in the role playing exercise, I took the foreign person aside and explained to her that we could use symbolism as a means to communicate better. She attempted to express her frustration over the poor manners of the group and I simply informed her that some people are not literate about the different cultural problems that English-as-a-Second Language students maintained. However, this did not satisfy her and she was growing clearly upset over how she had been treated by her group members. “The symbolic nature of language may complement or support a story’s theme or meaning” (Madden, 93). I realized that in order to be successful with this group and make the foreign group member comfortable, I would have to think of a way to communicate using symbolism. Next week, when the group reassembled for the same role play exercises as part of this training program, I was prepared with a new cultural literacy. Before the meeting, I informed all of the group members about the respect for group goals and for tradition that people from the Middle East carried. I had found a great article on the Internet that described many cultural dimensions common in Saudi Arabia, including collectivism, proud traditionalism, and also information from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs associated with belonging. My intention was to make the person comfortable and avoid a future difficult situation within the group. What I had done is promoted a new type of cultural literacy to the group members who actually seemed to appreciate the website information. It described how a person from the Middle East might respond when there is cultural conflict so that the group could be more aware of what they were doing incorrectly. My goal was to promote a new type of group morality for people who were clearly not used to working with foreign and diverse people in a group setting. Literacy, in this case, is not just having personal knowledge, but promoting knowledge to others so that they can be more diverse and respectful to others. Even though there were language barriers that continued until the entire training sessions were over, I was proud to have been able to help others in learning a new type of cultural literacy. The group member seemed to be more comfortable when others in the group tried harder to make her part of the in-group and she seemed more motivated to cooperate with the different role play scenarios we had to take care of. In thinking about content from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I had also created a cultural literacy about social belonging and satisfied the Saudi’s internal needs at the psychological level. Literacy about culture and understanding the frustrations that might arise about an inability to speak English is another form of literacy that is just as important. Knowledge creation and teaching others to embrace diversity is an excellent skill. If I had not pulled the information from the Internet, it is likely the group members would remain illiterate about the Saudi’s needs and would have continued to insult her collectivist ways and her language inability. It is my hope that this new type of literacy in cultural knowledge made the U.S. group members better equipped to work with others in the future. References Blodgett, Jeffrey G., Aysen Bakir & Gregory M. Rose. “A Test of the Validity of Hofstede’s Cultural Framework, The Journal of Consumer Marketing. Vol. 25, Iss. 6, 2008. Madden, Frank. Exploring Literature: Writing and Thinking about Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay, 2nd ed. Pearson Longman, 2004. Read More