This can be done in various degrees, whether it is through looking at a USA Today, going to an art museum, studying a foreign language or actually visiting a different country. When people are culturally literate, they show awareness that different cultures actually exist, they expand on differences and similarities in certain features of culture, such as language, and they learn to understand and apply cultural knowledge to help guide them in unfamiliar territory. The first step to becoming culturally literate is to realize that other cultures exist. Some people are comfortable living the same routine over and over and never venturing out from what they know. It is easy to take culture for granted.
People tend to think their culture is the only culture and therefore the best.
It is practical for us to think this way given that typically we don t deal with other cultures on a regular basis. However, to become culturally literate one has to leap outside their day to day life and into someone else s lifestyle. I had the experience of jumping out of my shell and into a new world when I went on a trip to central Europe three years ago. It was the first time I had immersed myself into alien territory. My research of Europe before the trip did not hinder my apprehension that I would not fit in with the Europeans lifestyle.