About Communication...
Currently, three of my fellow classmates (in First Year Japanese II) and I are working together on a podcast project of Awesome Roommate Guide in Japanese. Through this podcast, we would like to shed light on the importance of communication in our daily lives, in particular when it occurs between two different cultures, i.e., the American and the Japanese in our story.
Communication is a linguistic ability. We have to understand what others are talking about before we can make proper and immediate responses and comments. This is not always easy for me as a Chinese living in the States where English is the common language. I learned that most Japanese people do not speak English; so working hard on Japanese and trying to understand it more is the key skill we have to attain before we can efficiently talk with the Japanese and freely explore their country and culture.
Yet, communication is not only about verbal conversation, critical as that is. Good communication requires a lot of other skills. We can use gestures, body languages, and even drawings on a paper to convey our ideas and intentions to the interlocutors. Being a Chinese, I assume that knowing Kanji (though it is somewhat different from Chinese characters) would greatly help me in communication with the Japanese. A pen talk in Kanji might come to save me out of some awkward moments!
That being said, I think the most important thing in communication is less of skills but more of understandings. We communicate with others because we want to learn form them rather than impose on them our perceptions and ideas. Being respectful, patient, and understanding is crucial to a good communication especially between diverse cultures.
Our group project intends to speak to these aspects of communication in a humorous way. We are really excited about it and hope it will turn out to be an inspiring and entertaining work!