Monthly TOEFL Essay #1: (Showing respect through bowing and using honorific)

Describe a custom from your country that you would like people from other countries to adopt. Explain your choice, using specific reasons and examples.

 

 

In many Western countries, what do they say when they meet someone older than them? Maybe nothing more than “How are you”or “Good morning”. But in my country, unless it is someone very young or very familiar, when you meet someone you have to bow and use honorific. I would like to introduce this custom, using honorific and bowing, to people from other countries to adopt, for reasons that it is the essential culture for Korean and most of other Eastern Asian countries and it does remind the importance of respecting others.

To start with, I would like to introduce this honorific and bowing because they are common custom in Eastern Asia countries, and especially strict in Korea. When you see Korean parents teaching their children, they really are very strict about these two things, bowing and using honorific to the elders, and this makes Koreans to bow and use honorific in daily life without any doubt. However, the custom of bowing and using honorific exists not only in Korea. Most of other Eastern Asia countries are used to this custom. This is because most of Eastern Asian countries have adopted Confucianism which emphasizes politeness, and manners between people. So, if you get used to these customs, you can say that you are used to one of the most important and the most common culture in Eastern Asia. Your trip or life in these countries would be much better and easy, because people in these countries are very sensitive to and quiet strict about these customs.

Secondly, the reason why I want to introduce using honorific and bowing is because I believe it can remind people about respecting the others in daily life. Bowing every time seeing someone else is one of the ways of expressing “I respect you” by lowering yourself. Using honorific to the others is another way of expressing “I respect you” by making the others higher. I believe by doing so, people really can respect the others. This is also what Confucius said. “Act, then you will become.” Plus, we can see that they really do respect the others in Korea, especially the elders (well, some of them don’t), by helping elders hold heavy things or yielding places for them to sit in public transportations, even though they do not really know each other. I think that is because they have been taught and learned through bowing and using honorific in their life to respect the others, especially the elders. I am not saying that the culture of being “friends” between the elder and younger people is bad, but if people from other countries learn to bow and to use honorific, then they can get another opportunity to get used to respecting others.

In conclusion, since bowing and using honorific is common in not only Korea but also in most of Eastern Asian countries and they can let people respect the others by acting so in daily life, I would like to introduce bowing and using horrific to people from other countries. So, from now on, instead of saying just a simple hello, why don’t you bow and use honorific to show people you respect them?