Page 166 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 5. Performance and perceptions of silence 153

communication, except for comments by Miki’s lecturer, who was impressed with
and surprised by her presentations, which were based on prepared and written
materials. In terms of attitudes to talking in class, both Miki and Aya expressed
their wish to talk more. For example, Miki said, “I think I should talk more, but I
can’t,” and considered this to be a “communicative problem rather than problem
with English proficiency.” Thus, we can see that Miki is experiencing a dilemma
between two contrasting types of classroom discourse.
Aya’s comments and those of her Japanese Studies lecturers suggest that Aya
values and prefers the spoken mode of communication as a learning process. For
example, she commented on her performance in the recorded sessions:

(43) [Interview: Aya]
I think my performance was not good at all in class. Yeah. So, [in the
presentation], I wish I could have more interaction and things like that with
others rather than just reading… I have given presentations in Education
[subjects] before, but this is the first time I read all the way through. I didn’t
like it, yeah, because I really struggled to do just this [presentation].

This is at odds with the greater weight placed on the written mode of academ-
ic performance in Japanese education and described by Japanese students (see
Chapters 3 and 4). Aya’s frustration with her self-perceived inability and silence in
the History of Secondary Education class, in contrast to her voluble and engaging
image in Japanese Studies classes, seems to reflect a transitional stage in her adap-
tation to Australian classroom practice. There were also comments from Japanese
interviewees (see Chapter 4) which suggested their appreciation of discussion and
of the opportunity to express one’s own ideas in Australian education. This ex-
plains Miki and Aya’s frustration towards their own silence.
In addition to a preference for the written or spoken mode of communication,
a preference for the direction of communication emerged as one of the aspects
of perceived silence. A tendency found among the Japanese students was to di-
rect their talk exclusively towards the teacher. This tendency was in contrast with
their Australian peer students who appeared to assume and perform multi-direc-
tional modes of communication. Hence, the silence of Japanese students can be
observed when their Australian peers are talking among themselves. This type of
silence was particularly noticeable in Tadashi and Aya. Even Miki, who frequently
directed questions and comments towards her peers (see Section 5.4.2), did not
initiate sequences of talk: a close examination of Miki’s participation shows that
it tended to occur after an elicitation turn of another student or the lecturer or
comments initiated by her peers (see Section 5.4.2).
Such silence due to an exclusive focus on teacher-student communication can
be considered a consequence of Japanese classroom practices, where, as shown in