Professional Communication

During my summer programme in Korea, I stayed at Korea University’s hostel. At night, most students would gather at the basement to chitchat or play board games. One night, I was at the basement with two other Singaporean friends playing a traditional Korean card game called “Go”. An American guy joined us in the game too. Throughout the game, he sprawled his legs widely when he was sitting down. We were all very irritated with him. When he had won a game, he turned to my friend, Amy, who was sitting the nearest to him and gave her a hug because he was extremely happy that he had finally won a game. Amy was shocked at his sudden move. As she felt uneasy and angry, she made an excuse and went back to her room immediately.

The meaning of body posture can vary from culture to culture. In America where the culture values friendly and casual attitude, people always tend to sprawl when they are sitting down. However this is considered rude and inconsiderate to Singaporeans. It is unsightly and it restricts the movement of the one sitting beside. In the above situation, we all had very little leg space under the table because the American guy had relatively long legs as he is tall. As a result, we all sat quite uncomfortably.

Touch can cause misunderstanding in different cultural context. Gender roles also play a part. Different cultures may have variable acceptable touch. Singapore is not a touch-oriented country. To express happiness, we normally show it through facial expression, tone of voice or a hi-five with someone. In the above situation, the American chose to express his happiness by hugging Amy. Although hugging is common in America among family members, friends and even as a form of greeting, it is considered impolite and intrusive to Singaporeans for the American guy to hug Amy. This is because of gender differences and the fact that they are only acquaintances. In Singapore, hugging is uncommon except between couples. Even so, couples do not usually hug openly in public.

Have you ever faced a scenario whereby you did not have enough bid points to secure a place for a particular module? Or you had been out-bidded in the process of bidding? Many a times, I face with such problems. Often, I have to re-schedule my nicely planned timetable by looking for other suitable modules. As we all know, bid points are accumulative. Therefore, students who matriculated earlier generally have more bid points than those who matriculate in a later year. This may be unfair to the students who matriculated late. This is because with lesser bidding points, it is harder to secure places for the modules they want.

Moreover depending on the bidding round in which one bids for the module, successful bid points could differ among students for the same module. For example, one may spend one thousand points while the other may spend only one point for the same module.

My general research question would be ‘Do NUS students think that the bidding system is biased and thus should be abolished?’I think that most NUS students would agree with me that the bidding system we are adopting now is a biased one.

An attitudinal survey would be important in order to study this topic to test and confirm my hypothesis. Views of students could be reflected and made known to the Office of Student’s Affair (OSA). We can also gather ideas from students on how to make the allocation of modules a more impartial process to replace the current bidding system. Having a survey aids in convincing the OSA to change the way we are allocated our modules.