What's your favorite American TV program? Young Indians will often answer without hesitation friends. with American TV shows and movies freely available in India, and tons of information on the web, you may feel that you already know American culture that they encourage you not to be overconfident about your understanding of America. Just because you've connected with Chandler and Rachel on friends. While training Indian students to go abroad and scholarships sponsored by the Ford Foundation, we arranged for them to go to dinner at American and British homes. While debriefing the event the next day, one students shared a cultural experience.
The host was serving cake and asked if he would like ice cream with his cake. thinking it would be impolite to say yes, he said no. expecting the host to ask Again, he really did want ice cream. The host didn't ask again. He honored the students decision and didn't give him any ice cream. All the other students quickly realized if they want an ice cream they had to say yes, it was a small thing.
But over time, the small things build up. cultural understanding will impact your stay in America. And at times, the small things may become big misunderstandings. While doing a cultural training program in the US last summer, international students from China said that one of their fellow students was constantly hungry because she couldn't tell her host family that she needed more food. A few years ago, we were doing a project for a large BPO to help improve their customer service process through a better understanding of American culture. In the initial stage, we did a focus group with frontline employees.
To determine how much they understood about American culture, and we began asking questions, and they knew so much, they gave very good answers to our questions, so much so that I thought, I really needed here. What are we going to train them on? But then we began to read the emails and in some situations, listen to the calls. And we immediately knew why we were called. Although they knew a lot about American culture, it was not being translated into what they were saying. We learn culture by participating in it.
We learn it by doing it. All the book knowledge in the world is not a substitute for experiencing culture. Culture is like a game. It needs to be played.