I stepped out on exchange to “The Sunshine State” in USA; Florida, with the exciting hope in my mind to experience a total new university life, in a new culture with new friends. I soon realized that I had no problem in making friends there. Everyone was so approachable and they talk with such enthusiasm and friendliness that I was becoming comfortable with my new home in no time.
During the orientation I got to know most of the other exchange students who had come from almost every corner on the globe. My room mate was a girl from China and she was extremely sweet natured and introduced me to the rest of her friends. Somehow I happened to spend more and more time with these new friends and I was filled with excitement when we began to plan tours around the States. First we went to Orlando and eventually I realized that at times I was feeling a little awkward in their company. The reason was, most of the time they spoke in their mother tongue. Even though I was starting to feel left out and alone, I tried to ignore this since I was having the most wonderful adventure, in a land of fairy tales; The Disney World. It was nothing but a dream coming true for me and everything else mattered little.
There was girl in particular who was getting a little irritated when I tried to make conversations with them in English. She would ignore me and pretend not to notice me most of the time. She barely spoke to me casually except if she has to ask something formal. When I was talking to my room mate, this girl would interfere and start a conversation of her own with her. They were best of friends and every time I tried to talk with them I felt like an intruder. When ever I make a comment about something, she would laugh by saying something to the others that I don’t even understand. I tried not to notice her attitude towards me as much as possible but sometimes I had to use a lot of my patience to resist from reacting to her.
At the end of the Orlando trip I was feeling desperately lonely. It was meant to be a joyous adventure, yet it turned out to be quite frustrating. The main cause of this situation I faced was the difficulty in communication. Although this girl was fluent in English she had an accent which gave me trouble and I had to ask her to repeat things she said at times, which seemed to annoy her. On the other hand, she would have had problems in understanding my dialect of English too. She preferred to converse in her mother tongue and since I was the only person who was unable to comprehend it, she would have been irritated. This was my own experience where the language barrier turned out to be the root of a provoking conflict.
Do you think there was any chance for me to make my trip a pleasanter one?
The first words of a baby would probably be “amma”, “ma”, or “mammy”; he would put together the voices in his tiny head and try to address the one person who brought him to the world; his mother. From this day onwards he will be involved in a continuous learning process of various communication skills through out his life. A major part of his personality would be modeled as a result of his communicating nature with the rest of the world around him.
In my part of the world, where I come from, the initial step in learning to communicate is traditionally celebrated as a dignified ceremony. At around the age of 3, the child is being dictated his first alphabet by a respected and educated elder, on an auspicious time. This is believed to be a blessing for the child and a prerequisite for a successful education. Thus, this ceremony symbolizes the importance given to the process of learning and communication in my culture.
Furthermore, the importance of effective communication is highly evident in the context of social networking. The ability to be understood and not to be misunderstood by your friends and colleagues is as important as surviving in the work place. Ideas which are not conveyed properly or not interpreted properly could even give rise to situations concerning life and death. Effective communication is a skill that needs to be developed over time and different techniques of adaptation should be used at different places.
However, common obstacles for proper comprehension are the language and the cultural background. Being the international language, today English is studied by almost every child around the globe. It is like a bridge which crosses one person from the northern hemisphere to reach another in the southern hemisphere. However the standard of English education is not the same everywhere and it is spoken in different dialects with different accents depending on the geographical location. Therefore two people from China and America could be conversing in the common tongue but both could face the serious problem of understanding each other’s exact ideas and expressions.
Hence, learning effective communication and thereby identifying and overcoming the barriers involved in it is of great importance because we need to interact with all sorts of people from all parts of the world in our life time.
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