First of all, I’m sorry that I skipped posting activity #7. I thought I already did it. While doing this activity, I felt so bad so that I wouldn’t want to do the same one anymore. Any of them was not normal at all during conversation I had, and my friends felt awkward as well.
The first one I tried was staring at them during the conversation with one of my close friends. We hanged out at night for dinner with some other friends but we needed to go home later. When we were about to say goodbye to go home, one of my friend realized that she had missed her last train to her home. So, I decided to invite her to come over to my home and sleep there so that she can go home in the next morning. We were excited about it because we thought we could talk all night. After getting ready to sleep, I was on my bed and she was on the futon on the floor. We started talking about the dinner that we had with other friends and, and I started looking at her eyes while we were lying on the bed and futon. She first didn’t say anything about it and she seemed not to notice that I was having eye contact constantly. She seemed to want to look away and tried to be distracted with something that she could see in my room. Therefore, I kept talking and started to talk about something different to get her attention. Maybe this was interesting to her and she looked at me again. However, it was so hard not to try to laugh and finally I started laughing. She asked me what was so funny but I still didn’t answer. When almost two minutes passed, I told her that I was doing my assignment after finishing talking about our topic. She told me that she felt there was something wrong with me or she thought I was going to say something really important but I couldn’t. Then, she asked me what class the assignment for and we talked about this class.
On the other day, I was with another close friend to wait for my mother to pick us up. We were up to go home after we had birthday party for our friend. We were standing near a bus stop and there was a kind of wall. We were talking about my friend that we met coincidentally at a restaurant before we left and I tried to get closer to her against the wall. She told me that I was too close to her while laughing and asked me why and if there was a bug or dirt on her jacket to pick away. I just said, “Nothing.” She moved to the other side a little bit, but I failed to corner her. When I debriefed, she was glad that there was nothing wrong and told me that how weird this assignment was.
The hardest one for me was not having any eye contact during the conversation. I did it with my mother at home. I pretended that I was texting or checking mixi which is kind of Japanese Facebook or whatever we could do with cell phone while she was talking. I just nodded my head and said like ah-huh or something but had no eye contact with her. I could tell that she was getting irritated with me by the way she talked because I looked like I wasn’t listening to her even though I had another nonverbal communication. She asked me if I was listening to her seriously. I felt so bad. I wanted to stop this assignment after a few seconds. However, I kept pretending to be too interested with my phone. Two minutes were too long not to look at her eyes to show her that I was listening to her. Finally I debriefed, and she told me how bad it was. She thought I had no interest in her story and even I was fed up with my younger sister since we were talking about some issues with her.
Having too much eye contact and getting too closer could be funny to do even though they are still weird, but having eye contact hurts others and I don’t want to try this anymore. However, it was interesting how I and they felt when I did this assignment.
Some people and books say that Asian people don’t look at others when they are communicating. However, many Asian students including me insist that it’s not true and we have eye contact while communicating with others even though it might be shorter than people in America have. We need to show others, especially older people than us, respect and show that we are listening to them; otherwise it would be very rude. Do you believe that Asian people don’t have eye contact if you have ever talked with any of them? Why do you think people still say that even though it’s not true and many Asian people don’t believe it?
My Asian friends always look at me when I'm talking with them. A lack of eye contact is not something that I've ever associated with Asians.
返信削除People that say that just don't know any better. If someone doesn't make an effort to educate themselves about other cultures, they base their opinions on what others say and as we know, that isn't always factual information.
I feel like my Chinese students made very good eye contact. I think eye contact rules were the same in China. Maybe think there is less eye contact because Asia is known as more of an indirect culture in their speech.
返信削除Before hearing it in this class I had never heard of that stereotype before, and have never encountered a case where I have found any substantiation for it.
返信削除It just seems like ignorance of Asian cultures that this is assumed as fact.
I have never heard of that stereo type either. I have had alot of Asian friends and have never encountered this.
返信削除I agree with what she said above, I think it can just be ignorance and being judgemental.