My school text books have some extra material at the end of each chapter. They are basically articles about western culture. I've never used them with my students because we don't have time, but I thought this one was particularly funny.
The Culture of Exclamation
"Western people show exclamation even over trifles. This phenomenon isn't found an oriental culture that appreciates people who control their feeling and taciturn. We can usually see Americans who are moved so easily by things that Koreans aren't affected by. This means they are accustomed to expresing feeling freely and frankly.
In western culture, they start a conversation about the weather when they meet someone for the first time; 'It's a lovely day, isn't it?'. This is referenced to the inclement weather in England. The people who live in an area with nice weather like Korea aren't touched by this kind of thing but Englishmen can be impressed."
Just found your site today, and added it to my sidebar. Interesting, and nice play on words.
ReplyDeleteThat particular culture tip is quite amusing because, as you've probably seen, Koreans spend roughly 91% of the time exclaiming over trifles. Some of the tips and advice you see in books makes you really wonder how they get it so wrong.
I've talked about a few others in earlier posts:
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2007/12/negro-problem.html
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/10/beware-of-cultural-tips.html