FINAL ASSIGNMENT: Cultural Shock

Name: Lê Hoàng Dũng

Student ID: 15041991

Class: 15E13

Discussion question: If you have traveled to another culture, what are some things that made you more or less
effective or helped you to adapt or not adapt? These might be aspects of yourself or the situation. What skills would
you like to work on in yourself to make you a more effective intercultural communicator?

To each individual, moving to another region or a country with a new culture for educational or entertaining
purposes would seem to be an ordinary experience followed by several negative and positive changes of the
experiencer and they are called “Culture Shock”. It was cultural shock that invoked negative feelings and thoughts
inside my heart and my mind during my first year at university, which then naturally disappeared. Whether those
experiences are delightful or not, they all have taught me valuable lessons about life.
Described in the U-curve model by Sverre Lysgaard in 1955, cross-cultural adjustment involves four
main parts: Honeymoon, Culture shock, Adjustment, and Mastery. At the first stage of the cultural adjustment
– honeymoon, everything was totally new to me. Since the first time receiving the University Offer Letter, I had
always been filled with the eagerness to enjoy a new life in Hanoi. I even dreamt of everything that is going to happen
in the future with new friends, new accommodation, new school, etc. before going to bed. Time flies and I finally get
settled in a hostel near school with an appropriate monthly fee, and several days later, some plans to visit several
famous places with new classmates were quickly made. One interesting point Hanoi made me excited about was the
high density of numerous shopping centers and grocery stores which was very convenient for people to buy goods
without spending time travelling far from homes. However, the main focus of my mind at that time was the
independence. From now on, I could live my own life without listening to my parents’ complaints, obeying the
curfews, or even troubles rooting from my study at school (My high school has an automatic system sending messages
periodically to students’ parents with the aim of informing their children’s educational outcome, which was very
troublesome), etc. The new life in Hanoi with thousands of surprises did not last so long later, when a host of
difficulties rapidly challenged me.
It was about 3 months the migration, the life was not interesting as it was. Those tall buildings, crowded
places, colorful shopping centers and food stall came as no surprise to my mind. All the targets I was determined to
then become such ordinary things that no longer interested me. I questioned myself about the next goal of life beside
studying and increasingly showed ignorance to people and things surround. I realized that it was my parents’
complaints that acted as the core motivation and protected me from the negligence in life. Another trouble came from
what my illusion namely “independence”. In a little more detail, living under the parents’ nurture for nearly 20 years
had made me become a reliant person, and everything was disaster when I had to cope with my own problems from
cooking to even getting up on time with only my mother’s guidance through mobile phones. For example, being
accustomed to having my room cleaned by my mom, room gradually became so untidy that my close friend had to
frankly advise me to take some actions with the alarming situation after a visit to my place. Self-reliance was never so
easy.
Hanoi accent is the next point that has drawn my attention since the first day I set foot on this land. Before
working and studying in Hanoi, my grandmother and some other old-aged relatives had told me a little unique and
interesting information about Hanoi voice. I was told that their intonation was very slight and delicate as the own
living styles, but this is not the root of my problem with the new dialect. There are some people, friends or strangers,
sometimes deliberately or unintentionally made some offending jokes when trying to imitate my accent and dialect
regardless of the respect to me. This made me sad and had some negative thoughts about the people here. As
mentioned by Dodd (1988), travelers tend to follow three trends when facing the crisis stage: fight, flight, and go
native. With “fight”, they are likely to protect their original culture and keep an opposing attitude to the new culture.
For some people choose to flight, the situation is at a more negative state when they push themselves to the margin of
the new culture, deny to accept it and become connected with their countrymen. The last group of “go native” seems
more positive, it completely accepts the new culture as well as gradually dismiss its previous culture. In my case, I
chose to go native. Like many other acquaintances did before – learn to speak like a native, I industriously practiced
under the instruction of my friend and through paying careful attention to the surrounding people. It took about six
months to learn this dialect, which sounds very hilarious but true. When I paid a visit to my relatives in my hometown,
some of them curiously asked me such weird questions about my girly silky voice and even I myself find their voice
so strange either.