Intercultural communication skills

发布时间 : 星期二 文章Intercultural communication skills更新完毕开始阅读

Encounters with Westerners:

Improving Skills in English and

跨文化交际英语技巧:

如何跟西方人打交道

Intercultural Communication

by Don Snow

(原文)

Unit 1

Encounter: The Taxi

\is a Chinese student who has just arrived in the US to do graduate studies (\a long and tiring flight from China, she goes

through

customs

at

the

airport .Then, with all her luggage, she waits in line for a taxi.

After a long annoying wait, she finally gets a taxi. However, the taxi driver seems friendly enough, and the taxi is comfortable, so she is able to relax a little during the long drive to her school. When she gets to the school, the taxi's meter reads $ 32.5, so she starts getting the money out of her wallet. But when the taxi stops the driver turns around, smiles at Lee, and says that she should give him $50!

1

斯诺

(译文)

第一单元

事件:出租车费

莉是中国学生,刚来美国读研究生。(“Lee”是她的英文名。)她长途疲惫的飞行后,在机场通关。然后,带着所有的行李,她在排队等出租车。

她恼火地等了很久后,终于上了出租车。司机似乎很友好,出租车也很舒适,因此,她在去学校的路途中可以稍微放松放松。当到达学校时,出租车计价表显示32.50美元,她开始从钱包里掏钱。但当车停下时,司机转过身,微笑地对莉说:“50美元!”

Intercultural Reading:

Intercultural

Communication 跨文化交际阅读:

Communication

and

跨文化交际和了解西方人

Understanding Westerners

There are three kinds of things you

need to learn if you want to be able to communicate effectively with Westerns. First, you need to learn a foreign language, usually English. Second, you should learn as much as possible about Western cultures. However, studying English language and Western culture is not enough. You should also learn something about what happens when people from different cultures try to communicate with each other — in other words, \communication.\illustrate this point, consider this brief story:

Pete is an American graduate student who has just arrived in China to study for a year. He has studies Chinese in the US for two years, so he can speak some Chinese, but his conversation skills aren't very good.

The day after Pete's arrival, he meets several Chinese students in a park. They speak to Pete in Chinese, so he is excited that he has a chance to practice with real

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如果想有效地与西方人交流,你

需要学习三件事。首先,需要学习一 门外语,通常是英语。其次,应该尽 可能多地学习西方文化。然而,学习 英语和西方文化还不够。还应该学习 某些关于拥有不同文化背景的人们 相互交流即跨文化交际时会发生的 事。为了说明这点,请阅读下面的小 故事。

比特是美国研究生,刚到中国,他将在中国学习一年。之前,在美国学了两年汉语,因此,他会说一些汉语,但对话能力不是太好。 比特到达的第二天,在公园里遇到了几个中国学生。他们用汉语与比特交谈,因此,比特很兴奋,有了与中国人练习汉语的机会,也许说不准

Chinese people, and maybe also to make some friends. At first the Chinese students ask Pete easy questions such as where he is from, how long he has been in China and so forth. But soon they start asking more difficult questions that he finds harder to answer, and they sometimes laugh when he had trouble answering in Chinese. So Pete begins wondering if they are just making fun of him. Then one of the students says to Pete, \zuo pengyou ba\(let's be friends). Pete finds this a rather strange thing to say. He isn't quite sure what the student means by this, but feels the student is being pushy. Since Pete

is

getting more and more uncomfortable, he says he needs to go back to his school, and leaves rather abruptly. Later, Pete tells his American classmate about his day in the park with the Chinese students. He says they were rather rude to him, laughing at his Chinese mistakes. He also says they were pushy, and that he hopes he doesn't meet them again.

In the story above, what went wrong? Why did Pete draw such negative conclusions about the Chinese students? Part of the problem was that Pete's

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还交上几个中国朋友呢。起初,中国学生问了比特一些简单的问题,如他来自哪里,在中国多长时间了,等等。但是,很快他们开始问稍复杂的问题,他觉得很难回答。当他觉得很难用中文回答时,中国学生有时还笑。因此,比特想,他们可能在捉弄他。然后,其中一个学生对比特说:“women zuo pengyou ba”(Let's be friends.)。比特觉得这很怪。他不确定这位同学这样说的意思,觉得他很鲁莽。比感觉越特来越不舒服,说他得回学校,于是,很唐突地离开了。之后,比特将他在公园里遇见中国学生的事告诉了他的美国同学。他说中国学生对他很粗鲁,嘲笑他的汉语错误。他还说,他们很鲁莽,希望不要再见到他们。

在上面的故事中,问题出哪里 了。为何比特对中国学生得出如此 消极的评价?部分原因是比特的中 文不是很好,对他来说,交流有点困

Chinese wasn't very good, so it was hard for him to communicate. Also, it seems likely that Pete didn't understand Chinese culture very well, and this made it harder for him to understand why the students acted as they did. But another part of the answer lies in the way Pete handled this intercultural communication situation. When the Chinese students did or said things that seemed strange to him, he tended to jump to conclusions. For example, when he didn't understand why the students laughed when he spoke Chinese, he decided they were being rude. When he didn't understand why one student said \friend.\he decided the student was being too pushy. Even though he didn't really understand what was happening, he jumped to negative conclusions instead of considering other possible explanations for the Chinese students' behavior.

This book has three main purposes: 1) One is to help you improve your English, especially your ability to discuss and explain ideas, and your ability to talk about culture in English.

2) A second purpose is to help you learn more about the cultures of Western

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难。加之,比特对中国文化了解不是很多,这使他更难理解中国学生那样做的原因。但另一部分原因当归于比特处理此跨文化交际场景的方式。当觉得中国学生做的事,说的话很奇怪时,他就就得出结论了。比如,不理解为什么他说中文时中国学生会笑,他就觉得他们很粗鲁。当不理解为什么一个学生会说“women zuo pengyou ba”他就觉得那个学生很鲁莽。即使确实不懂发生了什么,他却得出消极结论而不是考虑中国学生这样做的其它可能的原因。

本书有3大目标:

1)第一帮你提高英语,尤其是讨 论和阐述想法的能力和用英语讨论文化的能力。

2)第二个目的是帮助你更多地了解西方文化。我们将特别关注美国

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