Job Discussion Forums

[grizzlies03]

Hey

I want to teach a class on culture shock, since a lot of my students want to learn about foreign cultures. I know what my biggest shocks were when I came to China, but what were yours?

Thanks.

[Jolly]

[goman72]

[Norman Bethune]

Culture Shock is nothing but an intense feeling of being isolated and alienated within a society different than one's own.

When I came to China, I thought I was experiencing culture shock when I became angry or annoyed at the minor daily hassles I had to endure here. Sometimes being in a room full of people I would feel isolated or alienated because I looked different and spoke a different language.

Then I had an epiphany. I didn't have culture shock at all. It was just the normal existential angst I experience everyday, in the West or China.

Everything that annoyed me here, annoyed me in Canada too.

There are Idiots sent to try us everywhere.

You can be alienated anywhere.

Culture shock...what a crock.

[Old Dog]

I think "culture shock" is real and hits most potently when, one day, you suddenly realize that the "givens" you thought everyone here was working to bear little relationship to your "givens" or downright contradict them. Then you think you're on Mars.

But it passes.

[randyj]

See http://www.onestopenglish.com/FreeResources/speaking.asp#Culture%20Shock for a speaking lesson on the subject of culture shock.

[tofuman]

In the States, I expect people in responsible positions to tell me the truth, although they do not always comply. Here, I expect people in responsible positions to lie, although they do not always comply.

[Roger]

"Culture shock" was never my favourite noun because I keep hearing it mostly from expats in foreign cultures, and I never heard it from immigrants to western societies. There might be a tendency to overemphasise a problem that westerners perceive and that is less of an issue to citizens in other countries.
The term "culture shock" might in fact gain in importance if you talk about it before these young learners are actually confronted with a situation that could be conducive to "culture shock".

I would focus on the fact that in most countries, several different cultures coexist. This certainly is true of Asian and African nations with their typical dichotomies of rural versus city populations. Can you imagine how alienated a Shanghainese might feel in the Gobi desert or on the Mongolian grasslands? Equally, Tibetans transplanted to Guangzhou or Shenzhen don't fit in perfectly. There even are a lot of subtle differences between the various locales and provinces which inevitably leads to parochial attitudes and ostracism between the various regional groups.
Just watch for those migrant construction workers in a big city - and see how locals treat them!

[Babala]

I taught a class on culture shock before when I was teaching college. I put them in small groups and assigned each of them a different country and asked them if they went to this country, what culture shocks do they think they would experience and why? It was an interesting lesson and it gave a chance to clear up some ignorances they may have had about some cultures.

[Norman Bethune]