On The Inside

By: Rebekah Compas Embrace Your Culture  "The only way to come to a full acceptance and understanding of yourself is by embracing your own culture, quirks, and differences while learning about those around you and exploring, incorporating, and embracing their cultures, quirks, and differences."   Every country has their own culture. In addition, every family and home has their own culture as well. As we are taught within our homes the different social norms, we tend to learn more about other cultures.  When we are influenced by other people's cultures, we can have a change in our self esteem. Professor Ivers said, "The culture which one is born has a certain affect on their self esteem." This is true. Think about this. In different cultures, talents and gifts might be more exalted than other cultures. This would have an affect on the self esteem on some people.  The food, music, activities that a person enjoys are very influenced by the culture...

Differences in Manners Around the World  by: Rebekah Compas Every where in the world, there are diverse ways of showing respect or using your manners. It is interesting how the actions you do can affect the feelings of others towards you. Manners can be defined as: 1) Social behavior or habits and 2) Polite or well-breed social behavior. I wanted to show you a few examples from other countries of different manners that exist and why it is so important to that specific culture.  "Some cultures people don't walk around with their hands in their pockets... But, in the United States this is considered normal." -Professor Ivers BYU-Idaho In Mexico you shouldn't use a fork to eat tacos, you simply just use your hands.  In Germany it can be rude if you use a knife to cut potatoes instead of smashing them with a fork.  In Spain you should enjoy the time after you eat and sit at the table.  These are just 3 ex...

Hey everyone! I really hope you are enjoying the posts I have and continue to read them! I am sharing my thoughts about the information I am studying in my TESOL class. It is very interesting and I hope that while you read, you learn something new! Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom Throughout the world, it is very popular that students attend a type of schooling or education. In many places, there are different social norms of what is respectful and what is crossing the line. Teachers have to understand the differences that may occur within their own classrooms since they will have many different cultures in their classroom. In Asia, Japan, and South America the children in school show a different way of respect. The people in Europe will have such a high respect for their teachers that they won't look them in the eye. It is their way of showing them the highest amount of respect they can. However, in the United States, that is almost a form of disrespect. Te...

I'm writing two blog posts in one day!! What!? I am just super excited to share more about today's post. Personal Space Differences Do you mind when people interrupt your personal space? How about borrowing one of your personal belongings? The answers may vary differently according to other cultures.  In my opinion, I don't really mind if someone is in my personal space. As long as they are clean, and someone I am related to. So, strangers are definitely not allowed near my personal space! Also, if someone borrows my clothes, I hope they bring them back nice and neat. That's all I request.  I have two sisters and we are all the same size. I grew up sharing clothes with them! It was not at all a problem since we all shared clothes and politely brought them back to each other. If someone didn't do what was required to do after borrowing, they would be informed! (by informed I mean usually yelled at). Here is a picture of my sisters and my mom just for fun!...

First, I want you to think about these two questions... How do you feel when you have reached success? How do you feel when you fail? In our lives, we experience many different feelings. In my last post, I mentioned the word emotions. In this post, I want to talk about how you attribute your emotions . Specifically the feelings of success and failure . In other cultures, everyone attributes these feelings differently. Keep reading if you want to understand how this works! There is a way that humans attribute their own successes and failures. Some tend to do so internally. Others may attribute it externally. What does this mean? To answer that question for you, there is a quote on the article here:  https://wattersattribution.wordpress.com/attributions-for-success-and-failure/ It says: " Bernard Weiner theorized that people tend to focus on the   stability of underlying behavior   and attribute it to either success or failure in life."  So basically, the...

Is there a difference between Individualism and Collectivism?   VS If you take a look at both of these pictures, you kind of get an idea of how individualism and collectivism work. They are different things, yes. They also have positives and negatives about them both. Let's see what they are:  Individualism:  The positives of individualism are:  It allows people to be themselves  It creates a respect for others and who they are in society It allows for more progress  Allows for a more diverse society with many different personalities The negatives or disadvantages are:  Feeling lonely or isolated Being too hard on yourself personally when you don't accomplish something that you felt you could  It could also lead to selfish actions  Now, these are just some of my opinions about the positives and negatives of individualism. I just learned about this today as part of my TESOL classes. Let's now ...

In this week's blog post, I want to continue the amazing teachings of Professor Jon Ivers at BYU-Idaho. You might have read in my recent blog posts how I have been writing all about his discussions in the classroom. It is so awesome to learn from him!  For today's topic, I learned about emotional expressivity relating to different countries and their cultures. As humans, we use our emotions to express ourselves. According to the words and actions of another person, we can understand how they might be feeling. It may show in their faces and movements as well. Different emotions help us feel different as well. If we didn't feel sad sometimes than we wouldn't understand how happiness felt. It is a great blessing that we have emotions. It allows us to really understand the different feelings of our daily lives!  Throughout the lesson that Professor Ivers gave, he said some very interesting points. In the first few minutes, he said,  "E motional expressivity i...

What is miscommunication?  Miscommunication is defined as a failure to communicate adequately. It is actually very common in the United States to have a miscommunication with someone. This might lead to someone getting their feelings hurt, having resentiment towards another person because of a miscommunication, and also someone might confuse confrontation with passion. It is interesting how different cultures communicate and miscommunicate in different ways. In today's blog post, think about how many times you have encountered a miscommunication and how you can improve on communicating adequately so it is less likely to happen again. Communication is key. 🔑 Communication should be an enjoyable experience. It should be a moment of learning and happiness with another person as we have the gift to communicate. One disadvantage that we have to remember is how often people can mishear or misunderstand one another. In my opinion, communication is the only way to make things bet...

My blog post has to do with the differences in cultures and how they consider their values, beliefs, and schedules. Each culture is different and it is beneficial to learn what differences they have. First, I wanted to define two words before I begin so that you are aware-- Monochronic time -oriented to tasks, schedules, and procedures in general Polychronic time -the way someone can multitask and complete many tasks and procedures at the same time.  Using these two vocabulary words we can learn that the cultures in our world have specific ways of doing things. There is a quote by a professor at BYUI about this topic. I want to share it so that we can be on the same page and understand where the world is at according to monochronic and polychronic. Here it is down below.  " My guess is that most of the world is polychronic.  My guess is that most of the world is polychronic.  The United States is monochronic, Northern Europe is monochronic, some other places...

Paradigms:  par·a·digm The word above might seem like a foreign language to you. When I first read it, I did not know how to even pronounce it. The way it is pronounced is written above so that you are able to see. I think it is important that we understand how to say a word before we learn what it means. Anyways, I can't wait to tell you more about the meaning of the word paradigm!  As a current student at BYU-Idaho, I am studying all about different cultures in order to help me be better in the career I am choosing to follow. The earth we live on has over 100 different countries. Each country has its very own culture. The importance that every culture has makes an impact on how a country thinks, acts, or says certain things. The different patterns that humans follow according to their own culture are called: paradigms .  As a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I was able to witness a different culture when I served in Uruguay, Montevide...