With our group consisting of 4 English students and 2 Chinese students, this meant that the majority of students were English speaking, with no knowledge of the Chinese language. Despite efforts to arrange group meetings, there was a slight communication barrier between cultures, something that we could have possibly addressed in a more helpful and cooperative way than simply arranging group meetings once a week. Despite our group maintaining communications via social media (facebook messaging) more regular meetings may have alleviated any misunderstandings or miscommunications between cultures, which caused our work to progress slowly at the beginning.
Furthermore, despite learning brief details of each other’s cultures such as schooling and general home life, knowledge of each other’s cultures was still limited, and therefore meeting outside of a working environment would have been beneficial in order to lean more background information.
Summary of our main challenges:
- Relatively slow start – Slight communication barriers
- Not completely effective at integrating from the start
- Social media not completely effective method of communication
- Group meetings were not regular enough
- Only moderate knowledge of each culture’s background information