Intercultural communication

I found the concepts about intercultural cultural communication and the resulting barriers to communication to be most interesting. I was recently at an event where most of the people spoke Spanish. At first I withdrew and spoke only to people I knew. I then started thinking about the concepts we studied and the barriers to intercultural communication. The book mentions that openness, resilience and self-esteem are factors in successfully adapting to a new culture. I tried this at the event and had a much more rewarding afternoon. While there are many barriers to intercultural communication, I think a lot of issues come from a person’s attitude and whether they want to make an effort. When someone is lazy about communicating, they withdraw and fall back to their own culture and habits.