Page 183 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

170 Silence in Intercultural Communication

(61) [Interview: Dr. Lucas]
[...] I keep on assessing through their interest, through their eyes, whether or
not I’m talking too much, so that’s okay. But I do try and question as well
although sometimes that doesn’t work quite well because they get a bit
frightened.

If one of Dr. Lucas’ strategies to assess student engagement with the subject was
non-verbal communication with “their eyes,” Aya’s frequent lowering of eye-gaze
around key open questions would negatively affect this assessment.
Dr. Lucas also mentioned in the interview that he did not see Aya as a student
“asserting a strong personality” or “projecting a mature and confident image.” In-
stead, he found hesitancy in her communication. In contrast, the student, Henry,
was positively evaluated by Dr. Lucas as being “excited, engaged” with “genuine
passion for issues,” and showing “personal interest” in the subject. Henry was
also often observed maintaining his eye-gaze towards Dr. Lucas, which may have
contributed to the positive image. The contrast between Aya and Henry found in
their use of eye-gaze, and the perceptions of their attitudes by Dr. Lucas, are simi-
lar to what Harumi (1999) found. The British students in her study directed their
eye-gaze towards the teacher during their silences while the Japanese students did
not, and furthermore, the meaning of Japanese students’ silence not accompa-
nied by such eye-gaze was found to be unclear, while the British students’ silence
accompanied by such eye-gaze was found to show a positive attitude to partici-
pation. The role of non-verbal expressions accompanying silence appears to be
significant, and requires more extensive, in depth research in the future.
Returning to the issue of varied perceptions among the students in Dr. Lucas’
class, Henry expressed an extremely positive attitude towards both the subject
and Dr. Lucas, as found in his comment below:

(62) [Interview: Henry]
I found that I’ve learnt a great deal more because of the small tute and the
small number of people in there. I find I’ve been really motivated to learn
because I can do the readings each week because you’re in small group. … in a
big class of 20 people, you can sit back for a week if you don’t do any readings
and not say a thing basically. But in a small group, you’ve got a ( ) of really
learning a great deal more because of it and it’s really - I think it’s a lot better.
It’s good. I really enjoy the class and I like how it’s run. I like how it’s organised
and things like that. I think Dr. Lucas is a very good lecturer.

The “pressure” to perform well and the level of deference towards the lecturer
expected of students may have been overestimated by Aya. This may have led her
to communicate on a footing where the ‘correct’ answer was important and the