Why can it seem that people from other cultures don't say what they mean?
Some people say “yes” when they really mean “no” and I found that out the hard way when I was a teacher. At the end of the class I would say “Do you understand what I mean?” and they would all nod their heads and say “yes” and then they'd turn in their papers and then it was very clear that they did not understand what I meant. And so I had to learn to change my style of asking questions. They're in our country now let them learn our ways. No, my main objective is to teach my students. So if it means that I have to phrase my question in another way in order to accomplish my goal of being an effective teacher, then instead of saying "does everybody understand?" I learned to say "tell me what you don't understand". All the hands went up. What confuses you? All the hands went up. Why was this? Because most of my students were from Asian and in Asian cultures and in some other places, but particularly in Asian cultures, people will say “yes” because they know that is what you want to hear. To say “no”, if I said to my students does everybody understand and they were to say no, then that would be casting a bad shadow on my reputation, it would mean I was not a good teacher. They said what they knew I wanted to hear. So open-ended questions were much better, you get the true answer. It's like if you're talking to Japanese, they go “Hai”, whatever you say, “Hai”. It doesn't mean “yes”, it means I hear you. Sometimes even nodding from other cultures does not means “yes” it just means I understand what you are saying, but it's not a yes and you have to be very careful about such things. In hospital situations, health care system, asking yes/no questions, which we tend to do, it's a very American direct way of communication will not always get us satisfactory answers, it will not really get us to the truth. We have to turn those questions into open-ended ones which is very hard to do, you have to think hard to avoid yes/no questions.
