Page 188 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 5. Performance and perceptions of silence 175

questions came after other students had responded. One was when she volun-
teered her answer after an initial attempt by Robin, one of the peer students. In
this instance, Dr. Lucas was not able to hear Aya’s soft voice in her response.
Furthermore, while Henry, one of Aya’s peer students, is positive about the
readings he is assigned to do, Aya found the reading assignments difficult and
daunting:

(67) [Interview: Aya]
The level of interest in this course, well, it was 70 or 80 percent. Then, I went
to the lecture, well, the lecture is easy, you know. Just listen to it, take notes and
have a look at it at home, thinking this part is talking about this, and so on.
But when it comes to the tutorial, just the fact that there is this much reading
lowered my level of interest. And perhaps when you look at the questions for
presentation and the essay, they are pretty hard, so the level of motivation is -
may be 40 percent. Less than half.

She further mentions that it is difficult to express herself because of difficulty in
grasping the concepts in reading. Aya wished to be perceived as an expressive
student who showed interest and engagement, but she felt unable to achieve this
because of her lack of ability and lack of preparation, as her comments suggest.
As a matter of fact, what she did in her presentation was read through sentences
in point form. In the interview, Dr. Lucas commented that the series of written
sentences on her handout was a “collection of things and did not hang together.”
In addition, he also commented that Aya’s essay which was submitted later on the
same topic was not “good at all,” and that she was “reliant on the authority of text”
and not able to “put the argument together.”
On the contrary, in the History of Japanese Literature class (not tape- or video-
recorded), Aya was evaluated positively by the lecturer as a student who “stands
out,” “naturally jumps in and speaks” and “knows what to say” in class. She further
mentioned that Aya was “always the first” to contribute. These comments are in
sharp contrast with what has been presented and discussed in relation to Aya in
the History of Secondary Education class. Thus, another important factor affect-
ing performance and perception of Aya’s communicative behaviour appears to be
her level of familiarity with the topic. In other words, she was advantaged by being
a native speaker of Japanese in classes such as “Japanese Linguistics” or “History
of Japanese Literature.” Aya herself commented on this advantage:

(68) [Interview: Aya]
[In the History of Japanese Literature class] there are quite a lot of readings,
but these readings for this subject are not at all hard for me.