I have been studying at EvCC for almost a year and I have learned there are some differences between Asian and American culture regarding saving and losing face.

When I first attended classes in summer 2009, I was surprised by the attitudes of students and teachers. Teachers were very open to questions, open-minded and student-centered rather than teacher-centered.

I observed that American students raised their questions anytime they did not understand something, even if the answers seemed obvious to me. My Business 101 instructor, Chad Lewis, would sometimes take 10 to 15 minutes just to argue with students and help them overcome commonly held misconceptions about a subject.

One of my American friends, Peter Bucher, told me that if he didn't ask whenever he had question, he would forget later and make mistakes on the test. He said it really took "the wind out of his sails."

However, Asian students, in general, would not want to interrupt teachers with their questions, since it would be rude and disrespectful. Furthermore, if they asked a question about something that everybody knew, they assume they would look stupid and lose face.

Personally, I would write down my questions and argue with teachers after class, so I would not waste time in class and lose face if I were wrong.

My Vietnamese roommate, Armstrong, shared with me what he saw in his math class. During the test, his American classmates would leave if they had tried their best but could not figure out the solution. On the other hand, other Asian students would stay until the end to prove that they did not give up, even though sometimes they got completely lost.

I realized that Americans look at results when evaluating effectiveness, while Asians put more stress on the entire working process.

Armstrong also shared that he had found some mistakes in his math instructor's lecture, and that when he argued with his instructor, the instructor finally admitted his faults.What surprised him was that during the next class period, the instructor publicly admitted that he had made mistakes in class and gave credit to Armstrong for correcting him.

Armstrong told me that he has never seen such a public apology from a teacher before.

"Teachers are the persons of highest respect, so I have never thought they would dare to publicly apologize students for making mistake, since I thought that would lower their images," said Armstrong. "But what I realized was that, by publicly admitting making mistakes, he, in fact, created [a] positive image [with] students, at least to me."