Page 165 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

152 Silence in Intercultural Communication

in other sessions, at least twice. This indicates that despite her average frequency
of overall voluntary participation, Aya was negatively evaluated in terms of her
engagement and commitment to the subject. This evaluation was in fact accurate,
as Aya’s own comments about the subject also indicate (see interview excerpt (67)
in 5.6.2 below). From both the interaction and interview data presented so far,
the possible explanations for this perception of Aya as a silent (and thus not com-
mitted) student would be her: (1) lack of voluntary contribution when discussing
key issues (2) soft voice which is difficult to hear; (3) lack of eye-contact with the
lecturer; (4) lack of strategies for discursive control; and (5) lack of proficiency in
English to cope with the subject. These factors seem to have overridden her rela-
tive frequency of participation in this case study.

5.4.4 Preferred mode of communication

It was shown in Chapter 3 that there is more focus on the written than spoken
mode of communication in Japanese classroom practices. In Chapter 4, com-
ments from Japanese students in Australia suggested that certain types of talk
in class are considered irrelevant by them, while they also perceived their own
silence negatively. When we look at the case studies, preference and orientation to
learning in the classroom varied.
In the case of Tadashi, there were indications that he did not value discussion
or student classroom participation as learning processes. Furthermore, his lectur-
er, Ms. Hardy, expressed the opinion that Tadashi and his Korean classmate did
not need the course any more because they were “sorted out” and “had their jobs
lined up.” Tadashi had not found a job at that stage, but Ms. Hardy’s impression
was correct insofar as the two students did not seem to feel the need to commit
themselves to discussions or the tasks. As mentioned earlier, Tadashi and his Ko-
rean partner did not discuss all of the four questions in their pair task but talked
about job hunting during the time allocated for pair discussion. One of his peer
students suggested his preference for listening and writing:
(42) [Interview: Kylie]
He’s always listening and he’s always um organised. […] he’s always taking
notes and listening, which is not everyone’s um ((laugh)). […] I think he
prefers just to listen and take notes but when it’s his turn to provide or
participate, he always says valuable stuff to say and he’s usually pretty
knowledgeable on what we’re doing.

With the other two case studies, the pictures are different, however. There is al-
most no evidence that the Japanese students dispreferred the spoken mode of