Cross-Cultural Communication

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Jenny Jiang

Professor Moldawa

Lit-160

16 October 2007

Time Cultures in the American Campus

Introduction: For most of international students, the American campus life is full of challenge because of the cross-cultural adaption process. Once you step into a different culture, you will face the differences from external aspects such as food, dress and customs to the internal ones, such as values and beliefs. And anyone who first comes to the America will notice the AmericansЎЇ attitude towards time. Why the Americans never seem to have enough time and always emphasize the time? This article will present some segments of my campus life in American University as an exchange student from China in order to explore the different time values in cross-cultural communication. A comparison based on these interesting experiences will help the reader to contextualize the issues for apprehending the particularities and differences between western and eastern time values. Some guidelines of time management will also be raised to benefit the international students who will step into American campus.

First I would like to share my experience of making appointment and participating in meeting with an American professor of my economics course. The professor with whom I made an appointment is an old gentleman from New York with native tongue and fast speaking speed. After bearing two classes, I decided to talk with the professor and tried to borrow the lecture

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notes. The professor agreed the appointment as soon as he checked his schedule and then fixed an exact time of meeting. I was shocked by the professorЎЇs schedule, he even measured his time in minutes and included almost everything in his schedule! In contrast with the people in china, we seldom have a schedule and wonЎЇt plan our work so detailed. If I want to meet a teacher in China, I can go ahead and never need to make an appointment because we donЎЇt have such a behavior. Furthermore, if I think the appointment is necessary and try to fix a time with my teacher, however, the teacher canЎЇt give me an exact time to meet. The only thing the teachers can be sure is a wider window of time, ÐŽoyou may come during 4pm to 6pmÐŽ± they will give such a reply. I think this wider window of time may exist in many countries with flexible and cyclical time value, because they do not want to plan the future in the way of making a schedule, and their attitudes toward time are to adapt themselves to it, not to manage it.

The segment of making an appointment is only one aspect showing the time cultures in America. Days later, I went to the meeting on time, and what impressed me most is that the professor focused on the meet and even hung up a telephone from his wife. The professor also tried to control the talk to maintain his appointment schedule. It seems that all the efforts the professor made is to do the thing well and on time, nothing can interrupt his plan. It will be unbelievable in China that a professor will stop his personal event just

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because a studentЎЇs meeting. Usually the meeting time in China will take a long time, because people would like to build relationships through the meeting. Even there is nothing important to talk aboutЈ¬I will still try to find some topics just for chatting. However this kind of emotional communication will never be allowed to happen in the American meeting, because they think itЎЇs a waste of time.

The linear time value becomes deeper in my heart when the economics course goes along. I am always told that all the assignments should be finished before deadline and do not try to get extra time. I am always reminded that participate in the group discussion on time. I am always recommended that work first, play later. Yes, this is the apothegm the American be taught when childhood, this is the attitude towards time the American be curved in their heart.

From all these experiences, I find that cultures holds different concepts of time views will have different underlying beliefs about ÐŽobestÐŽ± use of time. An interesting research investigate beliefs about time in a sample of international college students shows that different backgrounds of culture will influence the beliefs of personal time deeply(Block, Richard A.; Buggie, Stephen E. Beliefs about Time: Cross-Cultural Comparisons). According to this article, students from United States, Japan and Malawi participated in the research and answered the questions about time. The analysis based on the results shows

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that peopleЎЇs personal time value such as how to manage the time will differ from the cultures. Reynolds (2004) believes that cultures such as American which