MEET AND GREET
Warm up activity to learn greetings in different cultures. The group is divided into five fictitious "cultures". Each 'culture' has a different way of greeting one another as described below. Each group meets by themselves and determines their strategy. The objective is to learn about how you feel when you are in a situation which is not your cultural norm. This is a fun activity when the students really get into their 'culture'. Each student designs six business cards for themselves. Students only exchange cards if they are comfortable with their interaction with the person from the other culture. If not, no card. Students are to react to their cultural taboos. They can decide in their pre-meeting strategy how they will react when others cross their taboos etc. At the end, they add up their cards and see how successful cross-cultural interactions have been. In each group only share explain your taboos and customs with someone from another culture if you feel like it.
These cultures are all fictitious. For reference on countries, the book Kiss, Bow or Shake: How to do Business in Sixty Countries , by Terri Morison, Wayne Conway and George Borden, is useful for overviews of a selection of Asian cultures.
The students can name their culture if they like and add some other guidelines.
Culture A
customary greeting: firm two shake handshake, arm's length away
taboo: do NOT hug
name: formal by last name, with honorific, mrs. , sir, mr. ms, etc
gifts: accept, open right away and comment on
business cards: accept, put away in pocket
Culture B
customary greeting: long lasting handshake (likes to shake and talk), likes shoulders touching
taboo: do NOT open gifts in front of
name: formal last name only, but when comfortable first name okay
gifts: accept, don't open
business cards: accept, draw picture on
Culture C
customary greeting: patting someone on the head
taboo: do NOT draw on business card
name: informal, nicknames only
gifts: accept, give away to closest friend in front of gift giver
business cards: accept, keep holding and referring to during conversation
Culture D
customary greeting: head nod side to side,
taboo: men and women do not greet each other, walk away if opposite greets
name: names are taboo with strangers
gifts: refuse until offered 4 times then accept
business cards: accept, but only if presented with two hands, otherwise decline
Culture E
customary greeting: big hug
taboo: do NOT pat on the head
name: first names only
gifts: accept, do not open in public
business cards: accept, throw in the air if lands name side up, become friends, if lands name side down walk away in a huff. This is considered bad karma, no relationship will occur.
`THING ABOUT ME...`THING ABOUT WE`Write down on a piece of paper something about yourself...it could be a sport you like, music, colour of your underwear...anything goes ....then write something about what you know about Asia ...... music group, food, place, words in an Asian language.... anything goes again....Place all of these papers in a hat and pass them out among the group. Your task is to talk to everyone and try to find the person who matches the paper you picked. ps.. if they did write the colour of their underwear as the `thing about me...no peeking!
JUST FOR ME.....
At the beginning of the conference ask the students to write down their perceptions, ideas, images, knowledge and assumptions about Asia. Everyone can do this, not just the students! Place your thoughts in an envelope and then at the end of the conference, before you open your first envelop sit down and write what you know now after this week. Open your first envelope and compare. You can share this or keep it to yourself.
BIG WORDS MEAN LITTLE
During Asia Connects, there will be many interesting speeches and presentations given relaying important information about Asia Pacific. However, there are also many big words being used out there which need to be defined. You need markers and sticky name tags. On each one, write one of the big words and one of the definitions. Students in the group have to find their match....big word to the definition. When students think they have a match they go up to the facilitator and see if they are indeed a match. Print out the definition list. After all the matches are made students stand together in their pairs and define their big word.
materials needed:
black ink felt pens
tracing paper
white paper
Did you know that there are about 40,000 kanji characters. They say if you can learn at least 2,000 of the most common characters, you can read a Chinese newspaper? Did you also know that newspapers in Chinese and Japanese are read from what we consider the back page, forward and read in columns top to bottom., right to left?
In the English language, we only need to learn 26 letters! Ok, so we have thousands of word combinations with those 26 letters think of how many combinations there are with 40,000 characters!!!!
Have you ever thought what it would be like to travel somewhere and not be able to read anything? How would you know where to get off the train? How would you know what to order in a restaurant? How would you know which door was even the entrance to a restaurant?
Kanji originated in China and is widely used in Asia ( China, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Korea, and Japan) but it is read and pronounced differently in each country.
You can start by tracing the characters. Note that the order in which the characters are drawn is very important. After you have traced a few, try writing them on your own. Try to learn 5 characters today.
Resources:
Japanese in 10 minutes:
http://www.dfait- maeci.gc.ca/english/geo/japan/english/misc/japin10.html
E-mail and internet are quickly becoming a medium for human interaction. Web chats and on line discussions are a great ways to reach people across the world from your own backyard..okay, not your backyard but you know what we mean... still something is lost in the interaction. "Emoticons" (emotions/icons) have become a part of our high tech society, as a way to show emotions accompanying the written word. Little smiley faces such as :-) , sad :-( or winking faces ; ) are the simplest emoticons. A whole little sub-culture of emoticons exists among web users. But what about the representation of these faces and emotions in other cultures. The Japanese have developed a few variations of their own to reflect their emotions. The happy face in Japan looks like this ^_^. (source*), which looks rather like one of their best known cartoon characters 'Chibi Maruko Chan'. The Japanese consider it rude to smile and show their teeth. Japanese women tend to cover their mouths when they laugh or smile. This is considered very polite behaviour.
Sources:
*http://www.worldculture.com/resource.html
look up for web site and try to think of cross cultural emoticons......
New York Times August 8th, 1996 article " Japanese develop own language in bringing their culture on line".
© 1997 - TG Magazine / The Students Commission
© 1997 le magazine TG / la Commission des Ètudiants