Written Discourse

This is just a reflection.

As china opens up more and more to business opportunities, correspondance with them is going to increase hundred-fold or more. Hence, the need to understand why people of different cultures write the way they do.

Whether we are chinese or not, there is a need for the chinese to understand, say, the singaporean manner of crafting arguments or letters and for foreigners to understand how the chinese write their own letters and articles.

In this class, we have learnt many new styles of writing totally unheard of before we attended the class. Arabic methods of writing, chinese style of writing and western habits in writing. All these writing styles differ from one another and it is imperative that we, as a globalized people, understand the underlying meanings in the way different cultures pen their ideas and thoughts.

For example, in class, Dr Deng went through a very good example of writing. It was interesting to see how an indian professor could mark an indian students paper so highly when all were could see were the errors in the writing style. We picked out all the errors we could find and realized that in the end,

don't use your own cultural writing methods as the yardstick to judge other people's work.

I think that is the most important take away from the class and as china starts to being a powerhouse in the world of business, perhaps this class will have far fetching effects on my future.