Blog Post Sixteen: Effective and Ineffective Communication

A great example of effective communication that I found came from Thea. Thea was communicating with her host mom and mentions: “I have enjoyed hearing about politics and the ways of life from Maria my host mother and would love to learn more from her.” Thea showing interest and engaging within their culture is very effective and can lead to continued effective communication.

An example of ineffective communication came from Elizabeth. She mentioned that: “I feel like I respond to my host parents with the same answers all the time. I want to be able to tell them more about myself and let them understand more of who I am.” Ineffective communication is never positive, but thankfully Elizabeth’s was only due to a language barrier and not a form of ethnocentrism. She shows eagerness to communicate effectively as well which is positive.

One more example of effective communication comes from Meng during her time at Mitad del Mundo. When she saw the shrunken head she initially felt “a bit scary and disgusting.” This would be ineffective, but she recognized the ethnocentrism and corrected it.


I chose these three blog posts because I believe they are good representatives of effective and ineffective communication. I also think the experiences in all three of these posts are relatable to a majority of the class.

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