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Articles |
Teaching the unwritten rules of time and space
Lecturer in communication skills for engineering students at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her research interests include varieties of English and language in business and technology.
Lecturer in communication skills at Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests include materials development and language planning.
To be sociolinguistically competent in a foreign language, one must gain a knowledge of its unwritten rules. Perceptions of time and space are generally regarded as two of those unwritten rules. To achieve sociolinguistic competence in a second language one must understand that notions of time and space may be very different to those with which one is familiar. In workplaces where different cultures come together for negotiation, decision making, or meetings, misunderstandings may arise if people recognize only their own culture's concepts of time and space. This paper will examine and exemplify different ways of addressing the cultural components of time and space both in the workplace and in the classroom.