Outline - Min Hye Moon

Min Hye Moon
Essay #3 Research Paper.
Title: Standing between Two Cultures
Outline
1. Purpose: To inform the conflicts between Korean American parents and adolescents and suggest a solution for them.
2. Audience: Koreans who live in other nations and Koreans who are planning to live in different country.3. Tones: serious4.Point of view: As a second point of view who is Korean American
5. Thesis statement: Second generations have cultural conflicts with their parents. Korean Americans should be more in attention to themselves, who live between two cultures. Both Korean American parents and adolescents should keep ethnical identities which help them keep their lives as Korean Americans.
6. Structure:
Introduction:
Due to cultural differences of first and second generation Korean Immigrants, there are numerous conflicts between them. This leads to family conflict and difficulty in finding identity.
Body:
Part I
1. Korean American adolescents’ stress due to their conflict with parents.

a. Korean American adolescents, who are not fluent in Korean language, confront the problems with their parents who cannot speak English.
- Cultural differences between verbal expressions creates communication barrier between parents and adolescents.
-Korean American adolescents and their parents are unable to develop close parent–child relationships and are unlikely to communicate with each other about adolescents’ critical developmental issues, concerns, and school life.

b. Korean American parents want their children to have academic success and high social status, which results in Korean American adolescents to have suffering from their parents’ high authoritative expectation.
-Korean American adolescents have stress caused by their Korean parent’s high academic values.
-Koreans value education highly and view academic achievement as a primary means of attaining social status. Obtaining admission to prestigious universities is regarded as the first step to success.
-Authoritarian Korean American parents, who follows Korean traditional parental model, make their adolescents suffer from low achievement, poor self- perception.
2. Solution for Korean American parents-adolescents’ conflict.
a. Parents should balance both cultures, Korean and American, in order to communicate with their children.
b. Instead of being authoritarian parent, they need to be authoritative to their adolescents.
- Youth raised by authoritative parents performed better than youth raised by authoritarian fathers
c. Moreover, they should educate their children having ethnic identity which will help adolescents live with less stress. Therefore, adolescents also can balance both cultures.
-ethnic identity is crucial to adolescents' self-esteem and psychological well-being as measured in self-worth, sense of mastery, purpose in life, and social competence
-maintaining a positive identification with both one's own and the mainstream culture is an indicator of higher levels of positive psychological outcomes in adolescents.
-high level of ethnic identity contributes to the positive psychological well-being of ethnic minority adolescents
d. Adolescents also need to understand their parents’ stressful life as the first generation of immigrants.
-Korean American adults are having the highest level of stress among Asian American immigrants due to cultural conflict.
e. They also need to maintain their ethnic identity in order to communicate with their parents.
Conclusion
Although Korean American parents and children have conflict, they can resolve the problems. Parents need to learn American culture and teach their children about ethnic identities in order to reduce the cultural gap between them. Children also need to understand their parents’ stressful life.