Cultural Etiquette

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With the globalising world that we live in, especially in country as diverse and multiracial as Malaysia, there is no doubt that each individual may face challenges adapting to new environments due to its cultures. Culture in itself is a complex term to define, various authors have their own interpretation of culture based on their life experiences and observation therefore there isn’t one exact definition that can define this term. However, combining their insights, it can be said that culture is the shared learned values, norms, beliefs, rules, morals, behaviour and customs of a society. Each and every Malaysian has their own set of values and cultural believes, this combined with adapting to new culture of a tertiary educational institute …show more content…

Conducive to, harmoniously coexisting with one another, newcomer students should adjust to the local etiquette. Due to the various different behaviours and etiquettes, socialising may be an issue and newcomer student would have to adjust to the local cultural etiquettes (Lucy, 2017). Most etiquettes are often unspoken, thus students should be aware and informed about them before causing any awkward misunderstandings.
Malaysia has high power distance culture in which elders are always respected and acknowledges by their respected titles (Ahmed, et al., 2009). Thus, new students of low context cultures such as Denmark will face difficulties in adapting to this culture.
Furthermore Malaysia also exhibits high context culture in which communications are more explicit and more attention is paid to body language, voice tone, eye contact and facial expressions (how to cite ?) (Communicaid, 2009)(http://www.mzv.cz/file/1033199/doing_business_in_malaysia.pdf). Therefore, students from a low context culture such as Germany would have to adjust by refraining from answering directly especially in a

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