Since I was very young, I was taught through school lessons that “travel shapes a young person” or travel broadens the mind. Now it comes from my passion for travel that I plan to set foot in the country in the 1920s and, even more ambitiously, on all continents until the 1940s. After graduation, I intend to work for a two-year experience and prepare to study abroad. If I travel to another country or region, I will probably encounter a different culture in the host country or even in my own country. As far as I can imagine, I may encounter many difficulties. In fact, anyone who travels to another culture, inside or outside their nation of origin, can face culture shock and go through some form of transition experience, which helps make us more complex and complete individuals, a be better intercultural communicators. . Janet Bennett (1977) suggests that when there is a “loss of a familiar frame of reference” – be it a move to another area, both loss and change occur: “Culture shock bears a striking resemblance with the tensions and anxieties we face whenever change threatens the stability of our lives.” Since traveling to other cultures is unfamiliar to me, culture shock is inevitable; therefore, I had better improve and develop intercultural competence regarding knowledge, skill and attitude to work on in myself to achieve effectiveness and adequacy in intercultural communication. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In “Conceptualizing Intercultural Competence,” Spitzberg and Chagnon define intercultural competence as “the adequate and effective management of interaction between people who, to some degree or other, represent different or divergent affective, cognitive, and behavioral orientations in comparisons of the world”. The definitions of intercultural competence can be varied; however, in general, as stated by Arasaeratnam (2016), intercultural competence is a combination of one's personal abilities (such as flexibility, empathy, open-mindedness, self-awareness, adaptability, ability linguistic, cultural knowledge, etc.) as relevant contextual variables (such as shared objectives, incentives, perception of equality, perception of action, etc.), which help to build a bridge towards the new culture, there is need for cultural self-awareness (meaning the ways in which one's culture has influenced one's identity and worldview), culture-specific knowledge, deep cultural knowledge including understanding of other worldviews, and sociolinguistic awareness (Deardoff, 2006). Personally, I was deeply moved by a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. From his saying it can be deduced that only by nourishing ourselves with knowledge; they then become a useful person for humanity. Especially if we travel to other cultures, an ocean of knowledge is needed and we need to keep it in mind for cultural adaptation. Cross-cultural adaptation refers to a person's ability to negotiate culture to complete tasks (shopping, etc.), to “fit in” by adapting some degree of aspects of the host culture. Experiencing unfamiliar cultural contexts requires an adjustment to adaptation or, even at a higher level, integration. Even if one is an effective and appropriate intercultural communicator in one context, he or she may not be so in another cultural context. Therefore, it will never beIt is unnecessary to enrich ourselves with intercultural knowledge and learn how to adapt to cultural differences. From my teacher's experiences, she spent a year and a half volunteering in India. Even though she had done a serious study on indigenous culture, she had not familiarized her with the dos and don'ts that are widely accepted.level of Indian culture. Once she came to visit a Hindu temple, she was not allowed to enter because the temple guards told her that she was not Hindu. As a favor, he allowed my teacher to enter to visit the outside but he was not allowed to walk inside the sacred precinct. She was also warned not to take photos out of respect for the geniuses. It took her 3 hours from Jaipur to New Delhi just to see the temple, only because of inadequate knowledge of religion in indigenous culture. However, my teacher's case is believed to affect almost no one except her, while I would like to give another example of a Chinese tourist who caused a head-on collision that left a Perth man with fatal injuries. Quingwei Li, 35, had arrived in WA the day before driving on the wrong side of Indian Ocean Drive in Wilbinga and crashed into a car driven by Simon Treloar. As a result, Mr Treloar suffered multiple injuries, including a fractured pelvis, a shattered femur and ankle, a broken nose and a crushed right foot. Three passengers in Li's car were also injured. The accident occurred while entering a "blind bend". Li was on the wrong side of the road, he arrived the day before the accident and was told to drive on the left side while he was in his comfort zone on the right side of the road. Despite Li's lawyer's defence, Judge Simon Stone assured Li's lack of knowledge of WA road rules was no excuse. From this case, I assume that the accident might not have happened and he would not have been convicted if Li had knowledge of local traffic rules and got used to driving on the left. This also penetrates me with a lesson that “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” In the process of intercultural adaptation, which refers to the process one goes through to adapt to another culture (Kim, 2001), there are difficulties that most people perceive during cultural transitions, which essentially require skills such as observation , listening, evaluation, analysis, interpretation and reporting. Brian Spitzberg (1994) lists dozens of different skills and attitudes that have been linked to intercultural competence and effectiveness. The list includes things like charisma, flexibility, empathy, non-ethnocentrism, strength of personality, optimism, self-efficacy, and the ability to facilitate communication. From my point of view, among all the skills I need to be a successful traveler, adaptability should be given great consideration since it is the key to access the host culture and also the apartment I can live in. In general, traveling often gives us the opportunity to step out of our comfort zone and receive valuable lively lessons. It really sharpens our existing capabilities and awakens potential ones to make us ready for anything, be flexible and adapt to change. One of my friends studying in Japan said that from day one she found it difficult to change her lifestyle habits to keep up with the fast pace of the city and slowly adapt to the rush of work. He worked in a part-time job that required meticulousness and 100% error-free work on the part of the employer. That was the moment he learned to dedicate himself to work 100% and also to be,.