Page 121 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

108 Silence in Intercultural Communication

spoke only twice, on both occasions after being selected by the teacher. The aver-
age length of his turns was 1.5 seconds. Although the class, with 22 students, was
large, extremely active involvement on the part of other students was observed
throughout each of the two sessions. Overlapping, interruption and competition
for the floor were frequently observed, and humour and jokes from the students
were common. Tadashi, however, was an observer and did not attempt to jump
into the class discussion at all. This was reflected in his interview comments which
included, “I normally just listen, thinking, ‘Right, right’” or “Generally I am on the
side of listening, sometimes feeling amused, ‘Hah hah, that’s funny.’” In both of the
two observed sessions, the students worked in pairs to discuss how they would
cope with hypothetical problematic situations in the profession of teaching. The
students were given about ten to fifteen minutes to discuss the situations in pairs,
and the teacher asked each pair to report their solution to the class. The class was
then invited to comment on the solutions. In the first session observed, it was
Tadashi’s partner in the pair work who told the class what they had discussed, and
Tadashi did not speak during the class at all.
In the second session of Teaching as a Profession, it was again Tadashi’s part-
ner who initiated a comment. This time, however, Tadashi added a short com-
ment, which was followed by the teacher’s request for him to repeat. Although
Tadashi spoke in this session, his contribution was significantly smaller than most
other students.
To give a more general overview, Table 5.3 below shows the distribution of
talk along with the average number of turns and average turn length (in seconds)
of the sample population in this class (these conventions are followed in subse-
quent tables). Although the student number was 22, due to constraints on iden-
tifying participants in the video recorded data, the contributions of only nine
students in the group are included.

Table 5.3 Number and length of turns in Teaching as a Profession (Total)

Participant No. of classes Total number Total turn Average no. of Average turn
included of turns length turns per class length
Tadashi 2 2 3 1.0 1.5
Mark 1 34 309 34.0 9.1
Dave 1 31 308 31.0 10.0
Kylie 2 84 870 42.0 10.4
Michelle 1 34 385 34.0 11.3
Louise 1 17 130 17.0 7.6
Susie 1 1 4 1.0 4.0
Jenni 1 22 143 22.0 6.5
Pat 1 19 380 19.0 20.0
Average 22.3 8.9