Intercultural Competence Essay

1. Which of the imperatives for intercultural competence—demographic, technological, global, peace, or interpersonal—is the most powerful motivator for you to improve your intercultural competence? Explain.
 The demographic imperatives motivate me the most to improve my intercultural competence. I live in a country where cultures from all over the world live together. The United States of America is considered as a nation of immigrants, and it is getting more diverse day by day. We have people from every part of the globe, and those people bring their culture, language, festivals, and beliefs with them. With such diverse demographic make-up of our country, we are required to be interculturally competent. Moreover, living in one of the most

The diversity of Houston is what makes the city beautiful. We have people coming from different cultural background, yet we live and work together without any biases. We have markets from different part of worlds, streets that are named after non-American leaders, and events that celebrate our diversity. We go to school and work with people of different cultures. We eat lunches together, spend time with one another, learn one-another’s language, and respect one another even if we have different ideologies. This help people learn to make compromises and understand different perspectives. In places like Houston or even the United States, where the population come from Asia, Africa, Europe, and literally every part of the world, there is no choice for people other than to live together peacefully. Therefore, I believe the demographic imperatives is the most powerful motivator for me to improve my intercultural competence. When we live together, we get to know other people’s belief, and teach us how to communicate with them. If I am living in the community where people of diverse

It can based on anything from people’s religion, their age, or their sexual orientation. Stereotyping is one of the major culture biases our society faces. It affects intercultural communication as it overlooks differences among the individual members of the group and ignores their personal identity. When people make assumptions about an individual based on generalizations about the group to which he or she belongs, it disregards their personal character and personality. There are a number of ways in which stereotypes are harmful to intercultural communication. First of all, a group is inappropriately generalized. Not all the people in a group can be the same. If someone thinks so, they are lacking the basic knowledge about that particular group. There are some positive and some negative stereotypes; however, both of them are harmful to people in some ways. An example of negative stereotype would be considering all women are shy. These generalizations might affect interactions between women and the person holding such beliefs. Many women might not be shy and such assumption might also cause women to internalize such beliefs, avoid talking to people, and pretend to be shy. Similarly, even positive stereotype can cause problems for those stereotyped. For example, people hold the stereotype that all Asians are good at math. This might create excessive pressure on Asians to be good at math and might cause