Monday, August 17, 2009

Stereotypes Summary Table

AMERICAN:
Positive:
. Straight forwardness, alertness and patriotism.
Negative:
. Arrogant, obese, ignorant of cultures, obsessed with money and fanatical about personal appearance.

AUSTRALIAN:
Positive:
. Friendly, relaxed, shopaholic, outdoor attitude and compassionate about other people.
Negative:
. Not known bad stereotypes.

CANADIAN:
Positive:
. Friendly, open to other cultures, compassionate about other people.
Negative:
. Not known bad stereotypes.

FRENCH:
Positive:
. Good food and wine lovers.
Negative:
. Rude, not open to other cultures, arrogant

ITALIAN:
Positive:
. Good lovers, friendly.
Negative:
. Noisy people, stingy.

Colombian Stereotypes

PARAGRAPH 1:
. Positive Stereotype: happy, friendly, expressive.
. Negative Stereotype: drug dealers, personal appearance fanatics.

PARAGRAPH 2-3:
The most common positive stereotypes about Colombians is that we are very friendly and happy people. This is mostly true due to the fact that Latin cultures tend to be more expressive than other ones, however, depending to the country region some people is more expressive than other ones.

One of the most famous negative stereotypes about Colombians is that most of the people is involved in the drugs business. For the rest of the world this is almost true, but the reality is just a very small minority is actually dealing with drugs and most of our population are hard workers and students fighting for a better future and looking for more opportunities in their day to day lives.

Another well known negative stereotype is that Colombian women are fanatics about their personal appearance and obsessed with plastic surgery and for that reason they pay a lot of money to change their personal appearance. This stereotype has been originated in the Country´s obsession about beauty contests.

PARAGRAPH 4:
One of the more well known strength of Colombian people is to be hard workers. In our country we have not much educational and work opportunities and for that reason, in order to achieve academical and professional goals people has to be very persistent. Our environment is very competitive.

One of the weaknesses of our people is that we tend to put only short term goals to accomplish things and sometimes, we don't have long term goals well defined in order to enable our country to be well developed.

Introducing Myself

Hello, I would like to introduce myself to you. My name is Martha Arenas and I recently came from overseas to Australia. I was born and raised in Colombia, South America in a little town close to the Caribbean sea called Barranquilla. I graduated from University with a major in Business Administration and worked for Oxford University Press for about seven years.

Ten years ago I put on hold my career because I wanted to raise a family. Actually I am the mother of three children, one boy of 5 years old and twins of 9 years old. My husband has been working in the mining industry for the last two years.

Now I am studying English in Central TAFE trying to improve my language skills and to be able to communicate better with my friends.