Cross Cultural Understanding (Definition,Reason of learning,Negative Effects)

CROSS CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

NAME            : RAHMAT SATRIA

NIM                : 2011.050.075                       

1.      Definition

a.       According to J.P. Lederach (1995)  "Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them" (p. 9).

b.      According to G. Hofstede (1984) "Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another." (p. 51).

c.       J. Useem & R. Useem(1963) "Culture has been defined in a number of ways, but most simply, as the learned and shared behavior of a community of interacting human beings" (p. 169).

2.      Reason of Learning/Understanding Culture

a.       Dobrovol‘skij & Piirainen (2006), Colson (2008) and Williams (2010) claim that Only through understanding the culture of the target language will a language learner be able tofunction properly in the language s/he is learning.

b.      Sinagatullin (2003: 114) states that the goal of culture understanding is to help students acquire attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to successfully function within their own micro-culture, mainstream culture, and the global community

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c.       In Rossand Thornson‘s words, it is the development of knowledge and skills through experience in cultural differences to create cultural synergy that leads to the development of cross-cultural competence(Ross& Thornson, 2008).

3.      Negative Effects of Learning Culture

a.       Sapir (1949) said that at the impact it makes on the individual.To the ultra-conservative neophobe, culture represents the unknown and unwelcome. It is rituals, habits, traditions, and identities that they cannot relate to.

b.     According to E.M Bephwarhh and B.T Koctomapob (1973) that every linguistic form carries certain cultural meanings, so understanding and interpretation of such linguistic forms must go along with the understanding of their cultural connotations.

c.     Robert Lado (1957), in his book, Linguistics across Cultures, pointed out that native cultural was one of the main barriers to second language learning. Later, many researchers became involved in the study of negative cultural transfer in such aspects as language forms represented by cultural linguistics