10/11/2017; Lesson 05: Response to Cultural Differences Concerning Time

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Cultural differences concerning time have a tremendous effect on human life. As we were taught by professor Ivers, there are monochronic cultures and there are polychronic cultures and they have impact on communication.

Monochronic cultures usually do one thing at a time. They value orderliness. As professor Ivers taught, they are “oriented to tasks, schedules, and procedures and schedules… schedules and procedures have no reference to logic and human needs.” The time orientation of a culture affects how it values time, and the extent to which it believes it can control time. For example, America is often considered to be future-oriented, as compared to the more present-oriented France and the past-oriented Britain. Often (not always), a past orientation arises in cultures with a long history, like India or China, and a future orientation in younger countries, like the USA.

In polychronic world they are not ruled by schedule they are ruled by relationships; family is important and “they believe it”, as professor Ivers underlines. Polychronic cultures like to do multiple things at the same time. A manager's office in a polychronic culture typically has an open door, a ringing phone and a meeting. All those are going on at the same time. People are their main concern.

A teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages will, probably, have to face the issues emerging when students come from different cultures and social realities. A requirement for a teacher is to know her/his students. It will help her/him to know to which culture they belong and to better understand their attitude. It will help a teacher to orient their behavior towards each other and foster understanding among them. In our entire lives, we all learn. Maybe teaching children to be on time for their class or being friendly to their classmates is not a task that cannot be surpassed.