Forget the usual culture shocks that students experience abroad
““ just participating in family dinners every night can be a
novel cultural experience for an American student learning
economics in Korea.
The Center for International Business Education and Research,
located at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, sponsors three
business-language programs abroad every summer. The programs,
hosted in Shanghai, China, Seoul, South Korea, and Lima, Peru, are
currently accepting applicants and aim to give business and
economics students a different cultural experience from a unique
business perspective.
Unlike most study-abroad programs, the business-language abroad
programs are designed to give students a business-oriented
education. The courses, all taught in local languages -““
Chinese, Korean or Spanish ““ deal with how culture pertains
to business principles.
Specifically, classes in these programs can focus on business
vocabulary and local economies. Business students can also learn
how to understand business articles and even to make presentations
in local languages.
“We call it a language for specific purposes
program,” said Kathryn Paul, the assistant director of the
Language Resource Center at UCLA’s International Institute,
which helps conduct these language training programs for CIBER.
“The vocabulary and culture that we are going to focus on
is from the business world. The focus is on conducting business in
the country, and not on literature or history as you find in other
programs,” Paul said.
The program also focuses on local cultures, to give students a
different cross-cultural experience in addition to a lingual and
economic education.
Paul emphasizes the importance of cross-cultural contexts in the
business realm. For instance, being direct and blunt in
negotiations and meetings is a common trait in the United States.
But when American businessmen or students in Lima or Seoul expect
to be praised for blunt honesty, they are often surprised.
Direct American expressions ““ like a frank
“no” ““ might even be regarded as offensive in the
context of a negotiation in Spanish, Paul said. A cultural
education could thus be crucial in a business environment.
Students who have been on the program seem to value this
cultural education as much as the business one, said Yvonne Lira,
who went on the program to Lima in 2004. Lira now works for the
Latin American Center at UCLA.
“It was a great opportunity for us to integrate ourselves
with the local culture,” Lira said. “We even lived with
local families in Lima. That was a wonderful experience, which
definitely gave me a broader perspective on education.”
The program is especially useful for students who intend to set
up businesses abroad, or even just work for U.S. or foreign
companies located in other countries, Lira said. Students are taken
on tours of local businesses, and are also given the chance to make
contacts both within U.S. embassies and also with local
companies.
These business programs, originally designed only for graduate
business students at Anderson, are now also open to undergraduate
business economics and economics majors. Students are advised to
have a knowledge of the foreign language to at least an
intermediate level to enable them to better adjust to a different
cultural environment.
“Though I did four years of Spanish in high school, when I
went to Peru I found out I thought I knew a lot more than I
actually did,” said Erik Haus, a third-year graduate business
and computer science student, who went to Lima in summer 2003.
“That made it very hard to get adjusted, especially