The objective of this activity is to give you some practice in recognizing cultural competency issues in communication.
You will be presented with situations for three different cultural groups in which you have to make decisions about the cultural competency issues affecting the communication between you and your audience.
These example situations were developed with the input of individuals who are members of each of the cultural groups. The situations were then reviewed and field tested with a broader audience that included individuals from these target audiences.
Instructions
In this activity, you are a spokesperson making a presentation about the virus outbreak to target audiences who represent three different cultures: Asian American, Native American, and Hispanic American.
You will be given a situation and a question that requires your response. As you are presented with each situation, you will see an abstract image in the picture frame that will become more clear as you answer questions correctly.
Summary
When presenting information to the public, it is important to remember the relationship between nonverbal communication, the spokesperson, and the culture of the group being addressed.
It’s extremely important to do a little research about the group to whom you are speaking to learn about important cultural considerations. Although the examples presented here were developed and reviewed with individuals belonging to each of these broad groups, you should not consider these to be the definitive guidance when speaking to these three groups.
You should never make blanket assumptions about any ethnic, cultural, or racial group, but you should be aware of possible pitfalls, such as the examples in this activity.
Within any group, there will be individual and societal variations. Not all Asian, Latin American, Native American groups or individuals are the same, even though we may group them in a given category. Always do your homework before you appear before any group. And if this activity has led you to believe that it’s just too complicated to try to communicate with other cultural groups, remember that there are a few basic cultural do’s for all target audiences:
