Michael Manuilovics 11- STEM Professionalism

In the conversation of Chen and John they are having a misinterpretation of the message that is
sent by John. Wherein John is a native English speaker that means John speaks that language as
his first language, rather than Chen that is a native Chinese listener that she learned it as a
foreign language. The confusion originated when Chen did misunderstand the message conveyed
to her, She thought that John didn't agree or didn't like her idea but in reality John agrees with it,
the word "I couldn't agree with you more" means that they couldn't agree more than they do. The
reason why Chen misunderstood the message conveyed to her is because John uses an Idiom, he
express a message with different word and phrase but same concept and idea, Idioms are other
way in having a conversation that the meaning cannot be easily derived from its element. It is a
complicated and undemanding phrase to say. The disadvantages of using idioms to non native
English speaker or listener is that not all readers will recognize it because they may not be
familiar with the idioms you use to them. These examples demonstrate why idioms should be
lessen in communicating with someone because they lack precision and have the potential to
obstruct the sender's intended meaning, unfairly disadvantaging receivers from linguistic or
cultural backgrounds. There are some advantages particularly useful because they give you a
new, creative way to express yourself. Rather than saying it is raining very hard, you could say
“it is raining cats and dogs”, which is a more complex and interesting expression, common
examples include hang in there which means don’t give up and a piece of cake which means very
easy or not a challenge. In this scenario John completely agree to Chen's statement but the
problem is that Chen is unaware of English Idioms and John is unaware of Chen's ability and
circumstances that is why we need to be aware of how we express, talk and communicate with
someone from different cultural background especially because the common disadvantages of
communication is cultural differences, you have a difference in understanding a term. To prevent
this we have to be considerate in any form of differences to the person we are communicating
with. We need to be clear and concise, simplify our message and reduce the number of ideas in
each sentence and also avoid speaking in circles by getting to the point quickly. We need to be
straightforward in communicating with someone in order to function an effective communication
with each other.