THE NEEDS FOR CROSS CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

AbstractIn this globalization era, people from different countries need to understand each other in order to have good communication and relationships and hence reduce the problems of misunderstanding. In line with the technological progress and development, people can easily move from one part of the earth to another part of the world either to do business or go for vacation. For that reason, people need to be able to speak international languages. One of them is English. In Indonesia English is taught in schools and courses to enable the learners to use the language well. Our government considers English as an international language very important to learn because we can get better development progress when many people have good English competence. We can absorb new knowledge in business, science, and technology using our English competence. As we know, language is a part of culture. Therefore, learners need to understand the culture of the native speakers of the language being learned so that they can gain good competence in the language. The more we understand the culture, the better we will perform in using the language. Everybody will probably agree that we need to live in peace and gain prosperity. One way to keep peace and avoid conflict is to have cross cultural understanding. Although we believe that human beings were born equal, we realize that we have different habits and customs. Every culture has its own value system that governs the behaviors of the members. The differences between cultures can cause conflicts due to misunderstanding between different nationalities, religions, or ethnic groups. Keywords: Needs, Cross, Cultural, Understanding.