Cultural Values and Intercultural Communication

It is a discussion board assignment. Write about Cultural Values & Intercultural Communication .
Below are the Examples
Ex 1
In my experience of studying abroad for 9 years, there were a lot of times that I have had cross-cultural experiences. There was one time I remember that was during my college time in UCI. I was taking a course called International Business, we were assigned to do a team project to help LuLu Lemon open up the market in China. I had three teammates, I am the only Chinese member in my team and the other three were all Americans. So the problem was that my three team member's ideas was to creative. The plan the wanted to use does not meet the either the national nor the political conditions in China. And because I was to shy to speak out, I chose to follow their plan in the end. And it resulted us with a B- for our project. I think the reason why we didn't do well on the project is because we had low context of communication. If I was brave enough to stand out and convience them this should not be able to happen, and alos if they were not that confident about their ideas we could've had a better result.
Ex 2
I had my cross-cultural experience during my holiday trip in Korea. It happened when my family and I want to go back to our hotel from a shopping mall, and it’s already past 10 pm, so it’s pretty hard to find a taxi. When we successfully stopped a taxi, the driver asks in Korean where is our destination. Since we can’t speak the Korean language, I tried to explain it in English and show him the address using a hand gesture. However, the driver is having difficulty understanding it and neglects us in the end. We tried to stop two more taxis afterward, and they responded the same. Fortunately, we asked a young Korean man in the street who could speak English to help us communicate with the taxi driver, and finally, we can go back to the hotel. Through this experience, there is a language barrier that resulted in miscommunication. I also noticed there is a cultural difference between Korean and Indonesian culture. In Indonesia, we tend to be more shy and hesitant to speak up to a foreigner. In this case, the taxi driver has difficulty understanding English and is more straightforward in telling foreigners that they don’t understand. The cultural orientation that present in this experience is a high context in communication. In Korea, they have high-context cultures that tend to be more aware and observant of facial expressions, body language, changes in tone, and other aspects of communication that are not directly spoken, and therefore, we are relying on body language to communicate. To prevent miscommunication in the future, I need to prepare myself better to learn the basic Korean language and do some cultural research before visiting a country.
Ex 3
A cultural stereotype can be defined as having a particular belief on a target group; it can also be defined as having expectations for a specific group in society. Cultural stereotype among individuals in society is common, and sometimes it leads to problems such as misunderstandings and quarrels. An example of a cultural stereotype is suspecting someone of being a terrorist because the individual is an Arab. I have met with people of various ethnicities in my profession, and therefore I have had different cross-cultural experiences. There was a time I was working on a project with some of my classmates, and they were of various ethnicities. There was a misunderstanding in the project because of the language used. One of my group members thought that since I was from China, I would have a problem with understanding English and would therefore talk extra slowly and frequently ask me if I understood what they were talking about. This made me feel incompetent since I clearly understood English. Also, the group leader was individualist. He communicated directly and he always meant what he said. Apart from the cultural stereotype, there was the use of slang language once in a while, which brought a lot of misunderstanding among the group members. There were two group members of the same origin who spoke the same slang. This slang led to miscommunication as one of the group members confused the slang to mean something different and led to slight misunderstanding and quarrel in the group. If slang language was not used, miscommunication would not have happened. To prevent the miscommunication, the use of plain language would be better. Also, it would be helpful if the speaker would have explained what the slang meant. Lastly, being respectful and incorporating other methods of communication while speaking would have prevented the miscommunication.