Culture-Learning Strategy

Strategies I plan to use to understand the culture better.

Strategies to Use:

1. Think about different cross-cultural perspectives to examine situations in which I seem to offend someone or do something wrong.

2. Figure out what cultural values might be involved when I encounter a conflict or something goes wrong.

3. Consider ways in which different cultures might view things in different ways

4. Make distinctions between behavior that is personal (unique to the person), cultural (representative of the person's culture), and universal (a shared human concern).

5. Look at similarities as well as differences between people of different backgrounds.

6. Counter stereotypes others use about people from my country by using generalizations and cultural values instead.

7. Use generalizations instead of stereotypes when I make statements about people who are different from me.

Out of the strategies above, the one I plan to use the most is #4. "Make distinctions between behavior that is personal (unique to the person), cultural (representative of the person's culture), and universal (a shared human concern)." It is very easy to stereotype any culture by one interaction with a person but not always does that person's action reflect their culture as a whole. As I am learning the new Spanish culture I need to understand what society does as a whole and not what one person does.