Blog Assignment #4

Culture shock seems to be the major challenge for foreign students they go through when studying abroad. From the excerpt, “Two Years in the Melting Pot”, a Chinese journalist, Liu Zonguen is one of the students who face this challenge in which he moved from China to U.S. to learn, speak and write better in English. Under his challenge of cultural shock, he had a hard time being around with his American hosts, the McKnights, and American students. He misses the environment and culture he is use to. He met other Chinese people in which he was more comfortable being with than Americans. This had made him even closer to home, but this contradicts his goal of pursuing his interests for English since he tried to speak only in English while staying in the U.S. As a writer and a Filipino for this excerpt, I had the same experience than Mr. Zonguen, because it makes me go even closer to my homeland being with the same people. For the most part about cultural shock from foreigners, even they are talking to strangers but with the same culture, then would still fell the comfort and confidence of being away from their hometown no matter what. They both benefit from each other and could easily interact with one another.

Blog Assignment #3

As a Filipino, our culture differs in gestures, eye contact and body space from the American culture. Filipino gestures are more of the energetic image type while the American seems not. As for the eye contact, the American culture values eye contact as one of the important material of communication, especially in-person while the Filipino culture does not. Body spaces for Filipinos are not that of a big deal for people’s social life. American’s body space between their people means of something for privacy of one’s personal space. I would think that there is an obvious difference between the Filipino and American culture referring to nonverbal communication. It is because of how they were practiced on communication techniques of early education lives. Thus far, there are some similarities of nonverbal communication between the Filipinos and American culture; the greeting expressions for Filipinos are quite the same set-up to the American expressions. Lastly also, direct contact with each other and how they keep in-touch with one another quite simply. Most of the nonverbal communication styles and approach from different cultures are unique from each another. No matter how vastly the communication is thorough from neither each other nor anything that matters with physical capabilities for communication.

Blog Assignment 2: Option 2

People with different cultures play an important role on how they show their public and private lives. In the Philippine culture of people showing their personal sorrows and joys, they tend to hide their mistakes and sadness to other people. They don’t want to be embarrassed for the most part about themselves. In this case, it is natural for them to show positive expressions and joyfulness to other people when they are around with each other. As of their private lives, they don’t want them to reveal their true selves and how bad they really are. People are different from one another, some people show their emotions quickly and some do not. I noticed most of the people can easily show their emotions, even without them knowing, but mostly they could easily hide their negative emotions so as affections. Talking about affections, in my culture, they could easily hide them in no problem. They don’t want other people or their peers to know that they have a crush nor in-love with someone. Couples though in the other hand do not show affection with one another extremely. Hugging and holding hands in public are common, but kissing is not. You could barely see couples kissing in public. So as for the most part, people act differently with different perspective of their culture. As me, personally, I am a very open-minded person which I share my personal experiences whether it is my accomplishments or mistakes to others. I do not show my emotions quickly nor change it often.

About Me

As a freshman class of 2013 from University of Delaware, My name is Ricky Quilaton Sarmiento. I was born 18th of June 1991 in the country of the Philippines and I am 18 years old. I came here in the United States 2nd of July 2005. John and Jocylin Duffy are my parents. But I was mainly raised by my grandparents, Josue and Rosalia Sarmiento. I current live here in Delaware at the city of New Castle. I graduated at William Penn High School in 2009. And presently, like I said, I attend here at University of Delaware majoring in Chemistry. I love playing lacrosse, basketball and football. I eat out a lot, go out with friends and mainly study and read, especially about general science.

"Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan assignment

Being a person who can speak more than one language and that of my peers brings a different situation of communication between our parents. This is because our parents are the natives of our first language and they can speak it well as almost as perfectly. When I was growing up, my parents talked to me in Tagalog, a Filipino language, instead of English. I started learning the universal language when I was 5 years old. I only developed the English language at school and my peers. Then from there, I could already tell the difference between my abilities to speak it and my parents. My parents speak English in the formal way all the time, but on top of that, they speak it ‘broken’ as of what the author, Amy Tan, is referring to her mother in the book “Mother Tongue”.

Whenever I speak to my peers, I always talk to them in English even though they could speak in a different language the same way I do. The way I speak to them is differ from the way I speak to my parents and elders, because it is considered speaking in less formal situation when you talk to your friends rather than speaking to people older than you. Talking to elders in a formal way is a sign on showing respect, while having a conversation to your peers is rather fun in the kind of way. The language I natively speak has a similar formal and informal approach of voice or tone between the English languages.

Languages for me are the expressions of communication from people who could speak different ones. The way I see languages in different sorts are how they are in different manners when you speak them. For instance, Tagalog language has a different tenor and it simultaneously change of voice compared to the English language.