完形填空
1.
The 20th century witnessed great change in communication technology. International communication that only a few decades ago took days, if not weeks, now takes seconds. With e-mail, faxes, the Internet, satellites, and telephones we can ____1____ our international partners at a moment’s notice. If we want a more personal exchange, teleconferencing is almost like bringing the other person ____2____ into our office. And if we want a true face-to-facediscussion, jets can take us anywhere within hours. The variety of channels of communication is truly ____3____. The choice of which channel to use in a particular situation is influenced by ____4____ priorities and values.
The changes in technology have facilitated the exchange of ideas, but they also have amplified the possibilities for cultural misunderstanding. It is so easy to ____5____ that the person on the other end of the line (or e-mail or cell phone connection) communicates just as we do. After all, he or she uses the same technology and maybe even the same business terminology.
In addition to changes in technology, there have been massive political and economic changes in recent ____6____ that affect business communication internationally. China is adopting a market-oriented economy with its ownunique____7____; India is embracing Web and cell phone communication. Small industrialized countries resent being bullied by big ones.
Non-Western countries are becoming more assertive and protective of their cultural values and behaviors and do not accept Western business practices quietly any longer. In recent years the activity of international terrorists has generated increased vigilance around the world; Internet ____8____ are also a present threat to global communication channels.
As a result, understanding other cultures is more ____9____ than ever. If we consider that people with the same economic, political, and cultural background have problems communicating effectively, we can appreciate the difficulties and challenges that people from diverse cultures face when trying to communicate
Misunderstandings will always be a part of intercultural communication. But they can be ____10____ through an awareness of the priorities and expectations of the business partners.
1. contact 2. right 3. amazing 4. cultural 5. assume 6. decades 7. characteristics 8. viruses 9. important 10. minimized
- 1 -
2.
Culture is necessary for the survival and existence of human beings as human beings. Practically everything humans know, think, value, feel and do is learned through ___1___in a socio-cultural system. The few well-documented cases of children who are isolated from society in their early years support this statement. People have always been interested in ___2___ human beings would develop in a ―culture-free‖ setting. Today it is considered immoral to isolate individuals at birth for experimental reasons, but such experimentation was attempted in the past. The Egyptian pharaoh tried to discover what language children would ―naturally‖ ___3___ if they were reared where they could hear no human voice. He ordered two infants to be___4___ from society and had them brought up without the sound of any human speech. He assumed that they would ―naturally‖ talk in the language of their ancestors, and to his ears, their babbling sounded like Phrygian, an ancient Mediterranean tongue. In the fifteenth century, King James IV of Scotland tried a similar experiment and claimed his two infants spoke in Hebrew, the language of the ___5___ of the Bible. Both monarchs were mistaken, of course. Now we know that children learn human language in the same way they learn other kinds of human development – by participation in a cultural community. They learn a specific human language as well as specific kinds of human ___6___ through their membership in a specific___7___ community. The cases of the wolf-children make fascinating reading. But more importantly, they emphasize that we as human beings can only develop our potential by growing up in close ___8___ with other human beings.
Schools teach children cultural elements directly through such subjects as history, language, and science. But they also teach children ___9___; they implant the values of their specific culture by what they require children to do or not do. If the wolf-children were to be educated in a modern school, they might have an educational experience similar to those of other children. Although culture restricts us to certain kinds of values, thoughts and behavior, culture is also what allows us to ___10___ our human qualities and abilities. The price that we pay for being human is that we become human in a culturally specific way.
1. participation 2. how 3. speak 4. isolated 5. Bible 6. behavior 7. cultural 8. association 9. indirectly 10. develop
- 2 -
3.
Communication is central to our existence. It is through ____1____ that we learn who we are, and what the world around us is like. To a large ____2____, our identity as both individual and cultural being is shaped through communication. Through this, we explore the world around us, and ____3____ bonds, networks, and relationships with other people. Communication permits us to ____4____ our thoughts and feelings to others, and to satisfy our emotional and ____5____ needs as we learn to communicate better, we begin to achieve some measure of control over events that affect us and those around us.
There are three basic aspects to communication: our individual personality, the culture we operate in, and the physical ____6____ that surrounds us. Each of these aspects has a(n) ____7____ on what and how we communicate.
Communication is transactional. Each person encodes and sends messages, and in turn receives and decodes ____8____. The coding and decoding process is primarily culture-based and involves a diverse set of elements, including words, gestures, ____9____, values, etc. Whether a communication is successful or not depends greatly on the circumstances. The key is whether the participants have some ____10____ cultural background, knowledge and experiences. In cross-cultural situations, this shared area may be very small.
1. communication 2. extent 3. establish 4. express 5. material
6. environment 7. influence 8. messages
9. symbols 10. similar
- 3 -
4.
Japan and China are close geographically, and much of their philosophical and cultural heritage is a shared legacy. It is natural, therefore, for people unfamiliar with the Eastern world to overlook differences between these two cultures. This is clearly reflected in cross-cultural communication studies, which focus on comparisons and contrasts of ___1___ and Western perspectives. Typically, Asian cultures (such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean) are studied with reference to, or in contrast to, ___2___ cultures such as the United States. The tendency to consider Chinese and Japanese cultures as very similar to each other is also found in major intercultural communication textbooks, where maximal cultural differences are presented, implicitly or explicitly, between Asian and U.S. American cultures. Much cross-cultural communication research has explored the ___3___ between culture and various types of communication behavior using the construct of individualism and collectivism. Hofstede’s work, and that of others since, concludes that Eastern cultures are more ___4___ than European and North American cultures. A large number of cross-cultural and intercultural communication studies have assumed this East-West difference as a starting point for investigation of the cultural ___5___ on a range of communication practices, from in-group and out-group relationships, to conflict styles, to communication goals. Furthermore, past cross-cultural research has suggested that a collectivistic orientation is closely related to a high-context communication style. This view has often led to an assumption that Japanese and Chinese cultures employ ___6___ communication styles, that is, a mode of communication in which most of the information is conveyed by context, and little is expressed in explicit verbal messages. This focus on the East-West contrast, together with a reliance on one dimension for comparison, has emphasized ___7___ between Japan and China. In the past, cross-cultural communication studies have ___8___ both Japanese and Chinese as collectivistic cultures, and thus, by comparison to Western cultures, both Japanese and Chinese are presumed to employ high-context communication. As a result, differences between these two Eastern cultures, as is true for all non-Western cultures, have been largely ___9___. Moreover, research in the past has largely taken a positivistic approach, with operational definitions of the concepts in the studies based on Western thinking. This approach is inadequate for identifying subtle nuances or underlying differences in the diverse cultures classified as collectivistic, because from a Western perspective these ___10___ differences are often regarded as unimportant.
1. Eastern 2. Western 3. relation 4. collectivistic 5. influence 6. high-context 7. similarities 8. classified 9. overlooked 10. subtle
- 4 -
5.
Beyond M-time and P-time, Hall also _____1_____five time zones for arriving
late for appointments in accordance with European American reflections: _____2_____ something time (5-10 minutes late, approximately); _____3_____ apology time (10-15 minutes late, approximately); mildly _____4_____ or serious apology time (15-30 minutes late); ____5_____ time (30-45 minutes late);
_____6_____ insulting time (45-60 minutes late).
For people who follow M-time _____7_____ strictly (e.g. many northern Europeans and European Americans), their working unit of time is the 5-minute block. If they are 5 minutes late for an appointment, they mumble something. If they are 15 minutes late – a block of time _____8_____ three significant units – they are expected to make a slight apology. If they are 30 minutes late, they are expected to offer a serious apology with a _____9_____ reason for their lateness.
For other cultures, such as some of the Arab and Latin American cultures, if they are 30 minutes late, they may not even ―mumble something‖ to express an apology, especially when the reason concerns taking care of family or kinship affairs. They will expect _____10_____ from those who are waiting for them.
1. differentiates 2. mumble 3. slight 4. insulting 5. rude 6. downright 7. schedules 8. representing 9. persuasive 10. Understanding
- 5 -