Comparison Between Taiwanese Culture and American Culture---Diane Dai

Not all values are adequate for every country; there are always some differences between dissimilar countries. No values and assumptions are all the same in different countries.

In my opinion, there is no common value between American and Taiwanese. Taiwanese are indirect, no greetings from strangers and being forced to study; while Americans are kind, direct and spontaneous studying. First, American are outspoken in many kinds of things. When people make mistakes or have different opinion, American people just say them out loud; they don't care about other's feelings and point them out directly. On the contrary, Taiwanese don't say them forthright, but imply or use another way to tell other people what they have done wrong. They talk indirectly to keep the harmony. Besides these, Taiwanese also don't express their directly; they take action to express their love to other people.

American people are pretty friendly to everyone. Even though they don't know each other, they still greet as if they have known for a long time. This is pretty good, because when people greet you; your mood will be good and happy. Greetings are very important in daily life; without greetings, people's distance with each other hasn't become close anymore. Unlike the American people, Taiwanese don't greet, if someone does, they will think there is something wrong with that person and escape from that awkwardness. Some people night even scare and walk away.

Education can be fun for students. But in my country, education is a torture. We take tests almost every day in junior high school in order to go to better high schools. Almost every week, there are a lot of review tests to take. This makes our brain be stuffed in dead knowledge; we just keep memorizing and taking tests. That makes education meaningless, and students may lose their interest in studying. In my viewpoint, American style of studying is quite spontaneous, their pressure of studying might be as hard as ours, but they absorb the knowledge actively not passively, which makes students know more about other things they don't know.

Values and assumptions in every country are varied. Some of them might be the same, but in general, they are different. Every country has its special values and assumptions that can be learned and known.