Module 3 Task 11

Read the following situations to get familiar with their social/cultural context regarding refusing an invitation in Estonia. Then choose one and write your own short response by cliking the quiz.

SITUATION 4

Imagine you are a foreign student in Estonia. Your professor (Estonian by origin) invites you to dinner on the weekend as a way to thank you for your active participation in a university project. However, you made plans for this weekend long ago and couldn’t accept the invitation. 

SITUATION 5

Imagine you are a foreign student in Estonia. Your professor (Estonian by origin) invites you to participate in a writing camp next week. However, you do not feel like joining as you think you are more efficient working and writing from home instead of in a new environment. 

Click Quiz 

Compare your response with messages from students representing two different cultures (see the Exerpts below). To what extent do you share your approach to writing with any of them? See also comments in Ponder Point 6 as a follow up.

EXCERPT 3 (Li, 2022): a Chinese student writing a refusal to her professor:

PONDER POINT 6

Team-building activities exist in almost all cultures. The format may differ among different cultures. Some cultures or countries have their favourite way of getting people together. For example, in Estonia's academia, a writing camp or writing retreat is a very popular team-building activity. Usually, the university or research group provides the funding and invites students or researchers to a vocational hotel away from the city for a few days, with meals and recreational activities (e.g., sauna, swimming pool, spa, bowling, etc.) together with a seminar room provided. The goal of the writing camp is to provide a getaway from daily routine so people can concentrate on writing a certain task. A Chinese group leader would likely organize an eating- or cooking-together event for the teammates. For example, preparing a hot pot dinner at the professor’s house or treating students in a restaurant are common ways to bond with the group members. However, we must know that not everybody likes participating in a team event.

When it comes to refusing an invitation, people from a high-power-distance culture (e.g., Chinese) tend to phrase their refusals more politely and eloquently, looking for words to soften any potential negative effect of that refusal, making sure that the authority does not feel offended. In contrast, people from a low-power-distance culture (e.g., Australia) tend to refuse more directly, feeling that there is more social equality between people even though they assume hierarchical relationships at work or school. Most East European countries are relatively low-power-distance societies (Hofstede et al., 2010). Therefore, it is rather common that people tend to refuse directly to the superior person, yet in formal situations related to work or education, a certain level of language formality is expected. Thus, in our example, the Estonian professor may find the Chinese student’s refusal very polite and pleasing, while the Australian student’s response is a bit too informal. The expectation may be to write a semi-formal letter of refusal in this situation. Does your letter match this cultural expectation or express your own cultural background more closely?