Major Essay 2: Making Sense of your Experiences using a Theory

Intercultural Communication Stumbling Blocks
Students Name
Institutional Affiliation
Barna's theory on intercultural communication stumbling blocks presents six aspects involved in the process of communication and interaction with people from different cultures across the world. Among the aspects is the assumption of similarities whereby people fail to appreciate the fact that people have different cultural believes. As well, the tendency to evaluate is whereby individuals approve or disapprove others actions. Another aspect is stereotyping and preconceptions which result in discrimination, language differences and nonverbal misinterpretations which hinder the process of communication. Also, the high anxiety results in individuals having fear about the uncertainty of cultures across the world (Barna, 1976). Therefore, these aspects have a huge impact on my life when it comes to interacting with other students a well my future expectations in the career world.
During my school and career life, I will come across people from different cultures across the world. Given the fact that people from different parts of the world have different believes about life, then the manner in which I interact with them will have a huge impact on the success of the things that I do. Therefore, following Barnas theory of Intercultural Communication Stumbling Blocks, I have discovered some areas that I act in a similar or different manner to the theory. In regard to the assumption of similarities, I have been a victim of the same in plenty of occasions. I grew up in an environment whereby I did not interact with people from different cultures until I went to college. Therefore, I sometimes find myself disagreeing with the arguments of other people due to the assumption that my believes about an issue are similar to theirs. However, I have been working on this aspect a lot because I expect to experience cultural diversity, especially in the workplace. Given my career specification, there are high chances that I will be working in international companies hence the high chance of interacting with people from all over the world. To ensure success in the organization, people ought to understand one another in everything that they do. Therefore, if I assume that my ideologies are similar to those of my coworkers from other cultures, it could turn out to be chaotic hence hindering the achievement of organizational goals.
As well, Barnas argument on language differences is another challenge that I face when interacting with people from other cultural backgrounds. In the school environment, there are plenty of students who speak English as their second language (Mkono, 2016). Hence, it is easy to misunderstand some of the things that they say because they are still in the process of learning the language. However, this is not a great challenge because I try a lot to understand that they are not conversant with the language and rarely get offended by their language mistakes. I also try to learn their language and through this, we have been able to interact well with one another hence creating a conducive learning environment (Ollier-Malaterre, 2017). A lot of words have different meaning s and therefore, speaking a second language could result in a perso...