Mayor University

Faculty of Education

Comparison and
Contrast Essay

Name: Bastian Flores

Professor: Andrew Cook
Career: English Pedagogy
Subject: Language and Communication IV
Section: 2
Deadline: October 22nd
Amount of words: 731

Cultural similarities and differences between Americans and Australian

In the world and Anglo-Saxon speaker countries exist many differences and
similarities in cultural ways. Yet, ones of the most influents, from my perspective, are
Australia and United States that their culture and society are well highlighted inside
pop culture,also they have many entertaining contrasts and comparisons that can be
seen from a cultural point of view by people who have been in both countries and

even caught lifeways, habits, costumes and responses. Then, before I start to study
English, I personally cannot distinguish anything from Americans and Australians,
because I simply believed they were the same community but living in different
continent. Although, it apparently uses to be really boring, though not for those
people who have lived differences and similarities from these two beautiful countries
and have witnessed these facts by themselves, but as me that has found it out by
the curious internet, just wish for travelling to any of these countries to know closely
about them.
As I said before or as you can guess, being in one of these places would be my
dream, dreamy of course, but as the good student that I am, before I researched
about it. Then, I principally found, testimony of American people (City Data, 2011),
who have travelled to Australia, and Australians who have also been in United State.
Yet because of them is that I have known certainly similarities and differences of
both. Firstly, to begin an analysis is better to start with little details since as well as
Americans are part from the British colony, Aussies are part of it, too, therefore it
means that both descended from the Anglo-Saxon culture for they have an Englishspeaking language. Second, Australia is almost same size as mainland continental
U.S, let us know that territorially talking about Aussies and Americans live in the
same space of land, if it were not for the multiples territories that U.S has outside,
their mainland would be practically the same size (Australian government, 2015).
Third, as another similarity between US and AU, we can find that they use the same
money or currency, which is the dollar, for which being in both places is not so
different the payment and use of money. In another aspect, despite of total
population between AU and US are widely despair, people who come from both
place are usually confused each other during they travel abroad to countries where

English is not the first language. So, it could be caused because they apparently look
like similar in physical appearance (height, white skin, eyes color, blonde hair, etc.)
and the way of talk, although, in fact they are really different but not for a non-native
English speaker.
On the other hand, travelling to Australia, for a group of students (Education abroad
blog, 2011), identified some stuffs that could be considered before organizing a trip.
In Australia, they look at the street is in opposite direction contrary as in U.S is, since
they drive on the other side of the street on the other side of the car, so drivers and
pedestrian must take care during they walk in the street. Another fact, perhaps not so
important than the first one is date order, since as you can look at the picture below,
instead of writing April 10, they write 10 April.

In another context, Australia is a country which has a potential developed about sport
settings, since because of its wide and varied territory allows developing multiples
sports, cataloguing Australia as a leader in sport terms such as adventure sports,
extreme sports, aquatic sports, team sports, etc. At the same time, U.S also
participates actively in sports such as AU does it, creating a continuous competence
among these two great sport exponents, as they can find each other in match from
continental competencies and international games (for example Olympic game)

being very excited those match among them, such as it occurred in the last Olympic
game, London 2012, where they played a vibrant match that US got victory (Olympic
games, 2012).

To conclude, I think that doing this essay I realized about many ways of thinking and
comments that people make for a place, these are memories that a trip kept in
people's mind, and I am really pleasant for knowing some those sensations because
they open my mind and allow me to know about

cultural differences, and also

similarities.

REFERENCES
Libnani John, City-Data, Forum. 2011 Similarities and differences between U.S and
Australia? 2011. (City Data, 2011) from: http://www.city-data.com/forum/general-us/1417845-similarities-difference-between-u-s-australia.html#ixzz3oN4Y0eA5
Australian Government. AU, 2015 Australias Size Compared. (Australian
government, 2015) from: http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-locationinformation/dimensions/australias-size-compared

Gomes Nicole, Education Abroad, Blog. 2011 Australia and the USA: Top 11
differences (so far..), 2011. (Education abroad blog, 2011) from:
https://www.educationabroadnetwork.org/blog/australia-usa-top-11-differences/

Olympic, Website. 2012 London 2012, Basketball, Basketball women. Retrieved

from: http://www.olympic.org/olympic-results/london-2012/basketball/basketball-w